Deduction of Interests Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Deduction of Interests as a Value [Logical Deduction] –The value of Interests, derived from the existence of Normative Force itself– --Basic Clarifications-- A. Interests are not presuppositions onto themselves. This argument is based on the concept of examining that which can be justified relative to someone who already rationally values their own interests. The normative value of interests is agent-relative, someone who values nothing at all simply forfeits all normative force and cannot justify their actions or claims. B. In this context we can assume normative claims deduced from premises, must require at least one normative premise; this is justified by the is/ought gap. C. Interests are defined as any preferences, wants, desires, goals, that which a being's behavior tends towards; they are inherently and definitionally action-guiding. --The Argument Step-By-Step-- 0. Acceptance of any deductive argument, presupposes reason and deduction according to logic. 1. Normative Justifications prove a conclusion of "therefore, you ought to believe X" by definition. 2. Proving a conclusion in any deductive argument, requires premises. (basic deduction) 3. If normative justifications prove normative claims to some opponent, based on premises, those premises must apply to the opponent as otherwise the conclusion would not follow. 4. Normative conclusions must derive their normativity from normative premises. (is-ought gap) 5. For a normative premise to apply to some opponent, it must derive its normative force from claims already valid for the opponent; facts, logic, or values they hold as having force. 6. An opponent's wants, desires, beliefs, preferences; definition-wise these are their interests, and they are values the opponent holds with normative force relative to themselves. 7. A normative justification cannot be grounded on axioms or assumptions, as the axioms themselves are left unjustified and can be used to support contradicting claims. 8. Thus, for a normative premise to apply to some opponent, it must derive normative force from an appeal to truth, reason, presupposed norms, or the opponent's value of their own interests. 9. It is impossible to derive normative claims in the form "you ought not murder" from true facts alone. This is the is-ought fallacy. Thus epistemic truths and reason, fail to derive normative force. 10. Presuppositions arising from norms of a specific process cannot derive ethical force, as such process can be evaded and its norms need not apply outside the process. 11. Any argument that hinges on or argues for normative ethical force, thus must ultimately derive that normative force from an appeal to interests, as otherwise the conclusion need not apply. 12. Acceptance of the validity of normative ethical force thus presupposes that normative force can be justified, therefore appealing to the value of interests. –Acceptance of Normative Force presupposes a value of Interests– Therefore, to assume the existence of normative force rationally requires the presupposition of the normative value of Interests, as otherwise such normative force would be impossible to justify. To reject the normative value of Interests as they apply to all beings, is to make all arguments for normative force of any kind unjustifiable. To reject Interests as the source of normative value is thus to forfeit all normative force. --The Argument as a Deduction-- –Definitions: (Normative Justification): A deductive argument that derives a normative claim in the form “you ought to accept X” or “you ought not act against or inconsistent with X”. (Ultimate Justification): A normative justification of a claim that does not ultimately depend on unjustified normative premises, except for the rules of logic themselves. (Descriptive Facts): Is-statements, claims that are not normative but explain facts about the world, I.E. “the sky is blue”. (Interests): That which the behavior of a sentient being tends towards. (Interests as a value): The appeal to interests as the source of normativity that derives a normative claim. –Premises: (P1): Normative Justifications that derive normative claims in the form “you ought to accept X”, must include at least one normative premise. (P2): Purely descriptive facts and logical truths alone cannot derive normative claims. (The is-ought gap) (P3): Normative axioms and assumptions cannot constitute an ultimate justification, because the axioms themselves are left unjustified and can be used to support contradicting claims. (P4): Normative Justifications can derive normative claims by appealing to someone's interests, I.E. “you ought to buy a washing machine” from an interest in clean clothes. (P5): Normative justifications must derive their normativity from premises their target is rationally required to accept, as otherwise their target is not rationally required to accept the claim, leaving it unjustified. (P6): In deduction, claims are derived from premises; such premises are either descriptive facts, logical truths, interests, axioms, or presuppositions; or reducible thereto. (P7): Presuppositions arising from norms of some external process, cannot consistently ground normative ethical claims, as such process can be evaded and its norms need not apply outside the process. (P8): If a norm is merely presupposed by participation in an inevitable or universal process, that fact alone cannot justify a normative ethical claim as such presuppositions reduce to mere descriptive facts. –Logic: (L1): From (P2 + P3), neither descriptive facts, purely logical truths, nor axioms or assumptions can ultimately ground justification of normative claims. (L2): From (P1 + L1), normative justifications cannot derive conclusions solely from descriptive facts, purely logical truths, axioms, or assumptions. (L3): From (P4 + P5), normative justifications can derive normative claims by deriving the normativity from an appeal to interests. (L4): From (L2 + L3), interests have the capacity to ground normative justification, whereas descriptive facts, pure logic, and axioms cannot ultimately ground normative justification. (L5): From (L4 + P6), interests and presuppositions are the only available types of premises for the normative grounding of normative claims. (L6): From (P7 + P8), presuppositions cannot consistently justifiably ground normative claims. –Conclusion: From (L5 + L6): Therefore, normative ethical justifications that consistently derive claims in the form “you ought to accept X”, must ultimately appeal to interests as a value, as otherwise they are rendered unjustifiable.

Deliberation Ethics Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Deliberation Ethics (DE) [Full Text] —Yoggist Ethics from Deliberation (DE)— During deliberation, interlocutors evaluate arguments according to shared standards of reasoning. Arguments presented need not be fully derived but rather by nature of deliberation, rely on shared reasons others consider. This consideration of others reasons is justified by deliberation giving all members input and assuming their reasons and ideas have value. These norms are presupposed as valid within the context of deliberation. Not only are these norms valid within the context of deliberation, but if you give arguments not fully derived from first principles but rather justified by the nature of deliberation, these arguments are as a premise, justified by your interlocutor's acceptance of your reasons, and your acceptance of theirs. If your interlocutor gives you such an argument, then that argument again as a premise is only justified because you value their reasons. To later try and devalue the reasons of your interlocutor arbitrarily, is to forfeit this premise, invalidating the justification of the arguments you gave them and they gave you. To argue with a landlord who then decides to evict you because you argued against him too well, is for him to abandon deliberation and reject the norms that justify the consideration of his reasons in the first place. Imagine either arguing it's moral to give money to the poor based on “human dignity”, or accepting such a persuasion. To later reject the norm of human dignity or that others reasons have value to you, is to reject the very shared reasons that justified the argument. —Fairness as a Premise of the Arguments— To be clear, the arguer involved with deliberation isn't presupposing the norms of fairness, of others' reasons having value, not in any universal way. Instead, such norms are presupposed as a premise of the arguments given by the arguer, and arguments recieved and accepted by them. To reject the norms is to forfeit argumentative force in the context of cooperative deliberation, and to forfeit the justification of arguments granted from said deliberation. Therefore, acceptance of arguments through cooperative deliberation, where arguments given and recieved are not fully derived from first principles but rather justified through the acceptance of shared reasons, presupposes such a fairness principle universally. To reject the principle that others' reasons have value, is to forfeit argumentative force and the justification of any arguments you have made, and those you have accepted; a self-contradiction. —Fairness implies Anti-Abuse— The fairness implied by accepting others' reasons as valuable, is to accept others' reasons and thus their interests as having normative force over arguments that can apply to you. The reason for this is that by accepting others' reasons as valid as a premise of your own normative arguments, is to accept their reasons as normative in regards to your argument, or the basis of the normativity in your own normative arguments or similar that you yourself accept. This is the presupposition of the normative force of interests. Actions that inherently subordinate others' interests are inconsistent with this standard, as they invalidate the reasons given by others. This is because to present a standard entirely inconsistent with the value of your interlocutors' interests, is to prevent deliberation entirely. Attempting to instead fully derive the standard from first principles, falls into the trap of Justification Ethics. So any normative argument brought about not by full derivation but instead through mutual cooperative deliberation, must accept the normative value of both parties' interests, as a premise of any arguments given during deliberation. To later reject this value is to forfeit argumentative force and reject the very arguments you already accepted during deliberation, a contradiction. This then implies the Anti-Abuse Principle: —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. —Argumentation Ethics— Argumentation Ethics is an argument by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. This argument is the idea that the Non-Aggression Principle is presupposed by the norms of argumentation, and thus it is impossible to argue against the NAP or argue for norms inconsistent with the NAP during argumentation, without a performative contradiction. The problem most commonly pointed out is that appealing to a specific rule within a specific context or activity, does not imply that rule as a universal law outside the context. For example, playing chess presupposes that if the King is one move away from defeat, the game is over. To reject this is to not play chess, but playing chess doesn't imply the King being one move away from defeat somehow applies outside of the game of chess. Another problem of Argumentation Ethics is that it cannot on its own invalidate arguments against the NAP; it only attempts to conclude the arguer of the arguments is performatively contradicting themself. If someone derives something inconsistent with the NAP, via a deductive argument, that deduction may follow from its premises and the truth value of the premises has nothing to do with whether the arguer is contradicting the norms of argumentation. —Deliberation Ethics is better than Argumentation Ethics— Argumentation Ethics tries to say the arguer presupposes the NAP themselves, which falls into the trap of trying to universalize the norms of a particular activity. Yoggist Deliberation Ethics instead does not make claims against the arguer, but rather against their own arguments, and the arguments they accept as part of cooperative deliberation. As such, it is immune to the universalization problem, as your interlocutor's reasons must be valuable for the arguments they give you and you accept, to be valid. Thus, if you ever accept arguments that have not been fully derived from first principles but rather as part of the norms of cooperative deliberation, to then arbitrarily discredit the reasons of others is to contradict premises you yourself accept, thus it is to contradict oneself. —Deduction of Anti-Subordination through Deliberation— –Premises: (P1): Arguments justified through cooperative deliberation rather than full derivation from first principles, are justified based on acceptance of your interlocutor's reasons as meaningful. (P2): For another's reasons to be meaningful in the context of deliberation is for them to be accepted as applicable for proving normative claims. (P3): Acceptance of arguments that are themselves only justified by a specific basis, requires acceptance of that basis as a standard. (P4): If an argument is accepted on the basis of another's reasons, to reject those reasons solely because they belong to the interlocutor while retaining the argument justified by them is to contradict the acceptance of that argument. (P5): To accept a reason as applicable for proving a normative claim is to accept the normative force of that reason over actions to which the normative claim applies. (P6): To prevent an interlocutor from having their reasons considered as applicable to actions to which those reasons provide normative force, is to prevent those reasons from functioning as normative reasons in the deliberation. –Logic: (L1): From (P1 + P2), arguments justified through deliberation are justified based on acceptance of your interlocutor's reasons as meaningfully applicable for proving normative claims. (L2): From (L1 + P3), acceptance of arguments justified through deliberation presupposes acceptance of your interlocutor's reasons as being applicable for proving normative claims. (L3): From (L2 + P4), to reject your interlocutor's reasons solely because they belong to your interlocutor, while retaining an argument accepted on the basis of those reasons, is contradictory. (L4): From (L3), an interlocutor cannot consistently accept the normative force of another's reasons as a basis for an argument and then arbitrarily reject the normative force of those reasons. (L5): From (L4 + P5), an interlocutor who accepts another's reasons as applicable for proving normative claims must accept the normative force of those reasons over the actions to which those claims apply. (L6): From (L5 + P6), preventing an interlocutor from having their reasons considered as applicable to actions to which those reasons provide normative force, contradicts the normativity accepted through cooperative deliberation. (L7): From (L6), acting in a manner that prevents an interlocutor from having their reasons considered as applicable to actions to which those reasons provide normative force, invalidates the normative value of those reasons within the relationship. –Conclusion: From (L6): Actions that prevent another's reasons from having normative force over actions to which those reasons apply are inconsistent with the presuppositions of cooperative deliberation. Therefore, actions that inherently subordinate another's reasons by acting inconsistently with the idea that their reasons are applicable to justifying normative force, is inconsistent with the presuppositions of cooperative deliberation.

Solving the Problem of Induction Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Solving Hume's Problem of Induction [Full Text] —Hume's Problem of Induction— How do we know the past will reliably predict the future? This question is the heart of empiricism. When we do scientific experiments we rely on the assumption that experiments giving consistent results imply that in the real world similar conditions will create those same results. How do we know if this is true? Can we justify empiricism? Can we justify the idea that we can rightfully infer what will probably happen in the future based on past observations? Hume's answer was no. His argument was that if you look at past observations and see that empiricism works, that past observations can indeed be used to successfully predict future states, and then use that past success to infer empiricism will continue to work, your proof is only valid if you assume past states predict future ones. This is because if that assumption is wrong, then no matter how many cases of empiricism succeeding at predicting future states you have, that won't allow you to infer future states from right now. Therefore, to argue that the past predicts the future based on the success of the scientific method, the method of using repeated observations to predict outcomes, presupposes the very thing you try to justify. This is circular reasoning, you can't use empiricism to justify empiricism, therefore empiricism is left unjustified. —Why the Future is similar by Causality— There is a way around this, however. Imagine a world A and world B. They evolve through time. Now imagine B evolves in a way different from A. The moment we look at the divergence from A and ask “why”, and we get a reason that explains the divergence, that reason implies a difference between A and B to begin with, as that reason must apply to B and not to A. If in contrast, A and B were identical to begin with, then they are either simply the same state, or they will at least evolve in ways that are as similar as the states are similar. For if they do not, if B diverges from A again, we can again ask “why”, and if we get an answer, that reason implies a difference between them that contradicts our assumption they were identical. When it comes to science, we can infer the future will be relevantly similar to the past because we have no reason to postulate a fundamental difference between them. The moment some big change does happen over time, we can ask “why” and identify the cause. The only way this can fail is if B diverges form A for literally no reason at all, or if it diverges for a reason we fail to identify. —The Consistency of Reality— This would imply reality acting inconsistently, or physical laws we don't fully understand. We already have good reason to think physical laws are not entirely understood, since we already see some behavior that diverges from our predictions. Yet suspiciously, such behavior diverges in a consistent way, implying a deeper theory of physics that is consistent it is acting according to. Is it possible reality could turn inconsistent? Yes, but this is not useful information. To engage in argumentation surrounding physics at all is to presuppose that asking “why” and evaluating claims about physical states is a reasonable endeavor. That requires some sense of logical inference. And further, we have reduced the problem of induction to nothing more than the principle that physics is consistent, thus divergence from expectation implies greater physics that is probably observable. There is no good reason to think reality is inconsistent, it is unclear what that would even mean and again makes reasoning about physics itself impossible. Quantum Mechanics implies certain future states can occur not based purely on past states but instead based partly on past states and based on either true randomness or hidden variables. For true randomness especially, the explanation is simple. Randomness does not ultimately imply inconsistency, the distribution of probabilities is itself consistent. To claim reality is inconsistent and that the physical laws we know of could suddenly invert with no cause whatsoever is an entirely arbitrary proposition that is not substantiated. It is in the same epistemological ground of the idea that empiricism is false or invalid because we could all be insects eating alien mushrooms without knowing it. There isn't any proof for or against that idea, you can't prove a negative in that way, it would be like arguing there is an invisible teapot floating between Jupiter and Saturn. Also, to postulate anything that implies our own observations and reasoning is invalid, causes the objection itself to lose its own justification, since it relies on the ability to make consistent inferences on how reality works, to say anything about reality at all. This is the same issue as saying you’re actually a hallucinating insect. If you are, there is no reason for the physics or logic that led you to that conclusion to be trustworthy in the first place, so the proposition is self-defeating. Occam’s Razor implies we should accept the argument that requires the least assumptions, least arbitrary stipulations, that does not also result in contradiction. Therefore, our proposition that the past can reliably predict the future is on the solid ground of consistency itself, something we already presuppose by arguing about reality to begin with.

Markets and Interest Alignment Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Markets and Interest Alignment [Full Text] —Public / Private Spectrum— If you have a dinner party at your house, is it inherently frustrating to kick someone out of your house for unfair reasons? Is it unethical? The problem with this, is that unfair judgement can count as frustration, but this frustration is happening within a greater scope that in a private space such as your own home, is more important. A right to your own sanctuary, to privacy, is more important. Relative to respect for others interests, it is unethical. Relative to Yogg Law, the Anti-Abuse Principle, it is permissible in the sense that it could constitute abuse to try and prevent you from removing them from your dinner party. Within your own home you have a right to do it. A right to a private sanctuary makes less sense for something like a public restaurant. Though privately owned, it functions as a public space, and directly affects more people's interests in a way more inherent than your private home. In a private home, the person most affected by discrimination, is the home owner, not the person discriminated against. In a public restaurant, the opposite is true. The interest of someone wanting to stay at a dinner party, may be irrational if it resorts to violence, as they should have a private dwelling of their own. The protection of Interest Fulfillment implies as previously explained, a Right to Privacy and a Private Sanctuary to fulfill your own interests without frustrating against others. Whereas in a public restaurant, this logic stops making sense. There is no exact line here, it is a spectrum of what the difference between a public space and private space are, but the difference is in how different people's interests are weighed. A public restaurant would be weighed differently than a private club, for example. Although, if such a private club was integral to a community, this could change things. Very personal spaces are private. Very open spaces, are public. Spaces that are integral to a community or become inherently wrapped up in other's interests, such as spaces that provide services to people for profit, businesses, are public. —Ethics of Gated Communities— Similar to discrimination in open spaces, ethnostates and other gated large-scale communities create inherent frustration through discrimination and prejudice against people for reasons not relevant to Interests. This results in enforcement of frustration due to misaligned interests, as well as a lack of virtue such as respect and fairness, on behalf of the perpetrators of the unjustifiable exclusion. Racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice, are hence an inherent frustration against people for irrational reasons, and for reasons that treat them as a mere member of some undefinable group, rather than as an individual who should be judged as such. The interests of a criminal, or drug trafficker, or gang member, may be irrational interests that should be defended against, but that does not make the interests of a random individual irrational or invalid, simply due to them being of the same creed. --Factionalism destroys Freedom of Movement-- For the most part, discrimination due to creed is justified not based on genuine and justifiable mistrust; but rather ignorance, and factionalism. It is for this reason that so-called freedom of association can quickly turn into instead, a freedom from those separate from your tribe, and a freedom to inherently frustrate, to discriminate, against others. If Interests are to have value themselves, the right to freedom of movement of people should be protected. People should not be limited to live in the community they were born in, and communities should be more open to letting new people in; it is only then that people can be truly free to fulfill their own ends. For these reasons, because of the importance of freedom of movement, the value of interests, and the unjustifiability of prejudice, ethnostates, ethno-nationalism, and the overall vices of tribalism, are ultimately against what is ethical. —Imagine a Town - Why Gated Communities is Collectivism— Imagine you live in a town that does not allow black people, or gay people, or any other arbitrary prejudiced group. Let's say for the sake of argument that this town was created by the voluntary association of everyone involved, that is, everyone who lives in the town agreed to not let in anyone who is deemed "undesirable". Similar to tariffs though, enforcement of this contract forcibly prevents trade between members of the community and arbitrarily categorized outsiders. If a specific member of the community refuses to follow what essentially amounts to prohibitive "movement tariffs", then enforcement of the contract against them is nothing more than a restriction of their freedom in the name of the collective. This is very obviously not in line with Yoggism. Just because you sign a contract does not and can not justify enforcement of the contract in and of itself, not under the Anti-Abuse Principle. Not just because contracts can be unfair, but because if certain people have the capacity to craft the contracts, that gives them the unrestricted freedom to subordinate others under them. As such, the only imperative is to refuse to follow any contract that aims to destroy the freedom of movement of people across the world, and even if you sign such a contract for your own gain, to forcibly resist the enforcement of such an agreement, to protect your individuality from those hoping to subordinate you as a means to keep out those perceived as "lesser". —The Action Spectrum solves Everything— To fire someone from your workplace who is already employed is unambiguously an action being performed against them, an action that may be inherently frustrating to their interests and a representation of you subordinating them. To fire someone for being gay, or because of their race, are clear examples of this. What if instead of firing someone from a workplace, you merely refuse to hire them? Isn't that just inaction? Justification Ethics doesn't apply to inaction, right? The answer here is the divergence in behavior interpretation of the Action Spectrum. Justification Ethics applies to actions that require justification, this necessitates a distinction between active behavior and passive behavior, between action and inaction. Since to be sentient and aware is to act all the time in a loose sense, this distinction should be based on divergence from initial behaviors. Imagine a kid drowning in a pool. It is inaction to leave them be, by definition. To change your behavior to help save them is action. Justification Ethics particularly applies to action, to changes in behavior, as well as concrete behaviors themselves. One example of this being applied more broadly, is if someone steals food specifically to save themselves from starvation. Assuming ideal conditions, this action may require less "justificatory burden" than the action of trying to defend the good. The reason for this is simple, instinctually people will act to defend themselves from death. To deliberately not seek out food at any cost, to cause ones own starvation, is a very active thing to do. It diverges from your core impulses. Under this view, to refuse to hire someone you were originally going to hire, but you changed your tune the moment you found out they were gay, is an action that changes what you were doing. As such, discrimination in broader societal enterprise is similarly unjustifiable. —Theory of Local Freedoms— Adding on to what constitutes abuse, in the setting of open or semi-public spaces, or even private spaces with common mutual trust, is the idea that inherent frustration when present in larger societies is condemnable, is also unjustifiable in local spaces. --The Unethics of Censorship-- To be censored for honest criticism, is unethical relative to the value of Interests, and the value of Truth. It represents an inherent frustration against someone's non-frustrating interests. To allow for such a form of censorship, is to allow for some people's interests to be given protection from criticism, in a way that may be irrational. This same logic applies in local circumstances, it is not purely beholden to large societies or to governments. If you're in a community and they try to kick you out for criticizing their leader, that is bad in and of itself. This grants an idea of Local Freedoms, freedoms that apply in local spaces as well as open, public spaces. True freedom thus grants Local Freedoms, since the value of the Fulfillment of Interests implies protection from abuse, and violation of these local freedoms is itself a form of abuse. --Alien Invasion Example-- If a group of aliens came down to Earth and claimed that thousands of years ago they created the Earth and have been continuously sustaining and developing the Earth and thus claim property ownership over the entirety of Earth (but not the humans themselves) and thus want to evict us from it, and force us from our homes, this act would be acceptable under the NAP yet it is clearly an unethical abuse of power, completely unfair, and abusive. Humans would be well within their rights to defend themselves. Relative to interests this is clearly the case, the aliens have interests misaligned with the humans and are inherently frustrating upon the humans. --Stripping of Contentment-- If someone is enjoying the fruits of their labor, and becomes content with their situation, stripping the person of their goods is bad. The consistency of circumstances entails a rational inherent interest in the circumstance, granting an entitlement to not being stripped of the goods via inherently frustrating transgression. If someone enjoys the ability to speak their mind on some platform, they should be able to continue with that and should not have their ability to interact on a platform taken away arbitrarily or exploitatively; as the taking away itself is bad regardless of the medium it is exercised through. --Conclusions of Local Freedoms-- If some action is good or bad, its morality is based on the content of the action and not purely in the medium with which it's carried out. Censorship is bad, whether performed through violence, or enforced via property. Censorship is wrong because the content of the action is itself wrong, not the way it is enforced. —Why Market Domination is Inevitable— Any market if left without enough regulation, will naturally create centralization through cumulative advantage, and said centralization will not be destroyed unless it screws up majorly. The problem with this, is it allows dominant producers to abuse their consumers and workers as already explained, within a threshold. For industries that have a naturally higher barrier to entry, or a low barrier to entry for competition but a high barrier to entry for meaningful competition, perfect competition and near-perfect competition may be impossible which will result in dominant producers forming, creating the same problem as full-on monopolies, to a slightly lesser extent. Libertarian theory assumes markets select for quality, but network science and empirical data imply they select for path dependence. In the real world, large firms will have an advantage over smaller firms by virtue of being large. This is path dependence, where consumers are more likely to choose the large firm more often, because their services will be of more consistent quality. --Market Share Growth is Self-Reinforcing- Market domination is simply a predictable consequence of feedback loops. Advantages such as capital, brand recognition, and network effects, compound over time allowing for increases in bargaining power, visibility, reduced marginal costs, etc. All of which, allows for greater growth and attracts more customers and talent. It is a cycle that causes market share to ever increase, until the business completely messes something up. This is a problem, because in-order for such a cycle to be prevented, for rightful fear of centralization, competition needs to happen. Unfortunately, entry into a market is not binary. While small competitors may or may not enter easily, the dominant firm's accumulated advantages can naturally, or deliberately, prevent entrants from forming meaningful competition. --Centralization leads to Widespread Abuse-- Markets do not select for the best product in the abstract; instead they select for the product that is good enough given historical adoption. Once a firm becomes the default, quality improvements by competitors face diminishing returns, while quality degradation by the dominant firm faces a delayed and weakened punishment. Advantages become too accumulated and competition too reduced. This is Market Centralization. The moment market share is centralized to specific companies, regardless of whether domination is by an absolute monopoly or not, a firm can exert monopoly-like power while retaining nominal competitors. All a firm needs, is a decisive market share. This is not a problem because it 'raises prices', it is a problem because it undermines consent. When exit is costly and alternatives are functionally inferior, transactions become structurally forced to follow the decisions of the dominant firm. This destroys consensual transactions, and is actually the exact same reason why monopolies can abuse their consumers. The problem is simple. A lack of competition creates a lack of functional alternatives, creating the ability for a dominant producer to enforce their own interests against their consumers. Markets work best when business bends the knee to their workers and consumers, unfortunately centralization creates a scenario where service industry forces consumers and especially workers to serve them and their every want, and not the other way around. This is the heart of interest frustration in the economy. --Why Markets do not Self-Correct-- The assumption that markets will self-correct relies on the idea that sufficient harm will cause greater competition. This is true to an extent, but once market power is centralized, the conditions required for correction are systematically undermined and beholden to the interest asymmetry created by the relationship between producers, consumers, and last, workers. Market correction therefore does not fail because actors behave irrationally, but because rational behavior under asymmetric power conditions reinforces the dominant position. What emerges is not a temporary deviation from market logic, but its predictable outcome. —Entangled Property by Entangled Interests— If you are employed as part of some large-scale job, it is worth saying that a significant set of your interests are wrapped up in your job. Employment, and the specific business you are employed to, explicitly become conduits of your rational interests. If you are to own what you make, in an Interest Property sense, as when you make something your interests get wrapped up in what you make, then that gives a conclusion that has interesting consequences: That you have an ethical claim over the decisions of the business you yourself are employed to, when it affects you. This represents a Right over Influence, a right over that which inherently affects you, and this comes right out of the value of Interests. --Layoffs are Inherently Frustration against Entangled Interests-- If you have a job and are suddenly laid off, this can cause significant harm to your own ability to fulfill your interests, and all interests directly related to your job, are immediately frustrated. If a job includes long-term commitment and long working hours, decisions at the firm you work at are suddenly directly entangled with your own interests. This is Entangled Property. Instead of personal property which is private to an individual, property used in a profit-generating setting through tools and devices operated by multiple people, which is called Productive Property, and sometimes just Private Property or Private Productive Property. This kind of property usage creates an entanglement of people's interests. --Productive Property operated by multiple people creates Entangled Interests-- This productive property is the means of the production of goods, and as used here is entangled property when multiple people's lives are inherently affected, and hence this applies to employment. In a limited sense, and in a way relevant to this concept, to be unfairly laid off of a job is thus not only inherent frustration against you, but a violation against the conduit of your interests. For interests to have value is for you to own your interests. To own your interests is to have some say over that which affects you personally. —Worker and Consumer Ownership— Entangled Property and Abuse, Interest Frustration, Eventual Centralization.. There is a solution to these problems, the solution is Interest Alignment. The fundamental problem here is that a firm is owned by a single person, or small group of people, who's interests take priority over their employees and consumers. --Interests must be Aligned-- Producers, workers, and consumers, are the three main groups. For companies that are publicly traded, this also includes shareholders. Producers and shareholders taking precedence over workers and consumers, and this time the shareholders have significant market power as a side-effect of being part of the means to profit. The most common targets of market abuse can be identified as the Workers and Consumers. This logic can be used thus, as an ethical justification of worker and consumer ownership of the means of production, in the sense of worker-owned cooperative enterprise and consumer coops. The best way to align the interests of workers and producers together, is simply for the workers to be the producers, or for the workers to have ownership of the firm itself. The ethical and rational imperative is to grant ownership with those whose interests are most entangled with the firm, to give workers and consumers a real stake and voice in the means of production. --Worker-Owned Cooperatives have Advantages-- Empirically, around the world; Worker-Owned Cooperatives, enterprise under the legal ownership and control of their employees, have been shown to result in greater stability during economic downturn, as well as a persistence to lower wages during a crisis in a way more consensual as the workers themselves are the ones choosing to lower wages, and instead of simply doing an non-consensual layoff as is common in other forms of enterprise. This results in a more stable market environment less prone to bust and boom cycles than traditional capitalist enterprise; capitalist in the sense of individuals maintaining sole ownership of a business through contracts. --Worker-Ownership is better than Centralized Command Economies-- One thing this logic acts against, is Centralized Command Economies. A Command Economy is an economy where the means of production and exchange is operated at a significant scale by the State, or some other form of government or central power. This is fundamentally different from worker and consumer ownership, and such an economy has a poor track-record around the world, especially for State-owned production, as this removes the competition-driven market forces that allow for markets to align interests at all. This damages the ability to decide what should be produced and how. To simply nationalize industry naively, and put it all under centralized control of a single entity with likely poor management, is not a good strategy. The market is a tool, not an enemy of Interests. —The Conclusion— Worker and Consumer Ownership, along with acts against Discrimination and an ensurance of fair treatment of consumers and workers alike, is the imperative given by Interest Alignment. This then acts as a rational justification for Worker Cooperatives, Consumer Cooperatives, Right to Employment Laws, Civil Rights, and the philosophical basis of Fairness in greater society.

Estoppel Ethics Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Estoppel Ethics (The EE Argument) [Full Text] —Ethics from Estoppel (EE)— The estoppel is the following concept: Bob punches Alice, so now if Alice punches Bob back, if Bob tries to object to Alice punching, he contradicts himself, because Bob already set the norm that punching is justified. Bob, by punching, is said to be 'estopped' from objecting to Alice's self-defense. Some right-libertarians, specifically Hoppeans, argue such an estoppel implies the Non-Aggression Principle. This intuition is incorrect, because it assumes one action involving force is necessarily equivalent to any other action involving force. That claim is only true if the NAP is true, thus it is begging the question. Instead, we can think of the Estoppel as a measure of whether a coercive claim can be justified. Whenever a person invokes force, or any semblance of obligation upon others, including negative obligation, they advance a claim about what others may do, a claim about what others may be prevented from doing, or a claim about whose interests may be protected or overridden. We can then think of this as the measure of whether it is justified or whether the actor in a situation is 'estopped' aka their justification can survive when the people involved are treated as interchangeable. If it cannot, then the claim defeats itself. This will be defended shortly. The NAP is thus not the foundation of estoppel, but one possible consequence. We will now argue that the acceptance of the estoppel as normatively binding, derives the Anti-Abuse Principle of Yoggism, that actions inherently frustrating and constituting intrinsic subordination of interests, are illegitimate. —Estoppel Begins with Consistency— The original case of punching, of violent aggression, reveals the first requirement for the estoppel. An aggressor initiates force against another person, and when defensive force is used in response, the aggressor objects. This aggressor's position contains two incompatible claims. His action asserts that force is permissible under these circumstances, while his objection asserts similar force is impermissible under the same circumstances. The aggressor attempts to reject the principle that his own action has already asserted, this is the source of the inconsistency of the objection. However, this alone reveals a limitation in how the estoppel is used. —The Problem of Special Pleading— What if the aggressor simply claims, "Only I have the right to use force under these circumstances"? This claim may be internally consistent, but that causes the estoppel to stop working entirely. If another person uses identical force against them, they suddenly can object because their new principle distinguishes between persons, granting them special privilege. Following this logic, anyone could claim "my group may rule another group, uninhibited" and get off scot-free. If this special pleading were sufficient, estoppel would no longer distinguish between justified and unjustified coercion. Any person could escape estoppel merely by defining themselves as uniquely immune to objection. An account of estoppel that permits such arbitrary privilege is not an account of estoppel at all. A true estoppel, and a true grounding of self-defense in the estoppel, is thus required to recognize that a justification needs to not just be consistent but also be valid independently of who happens to benefit from it. This is interchangeability, of persons. This requirement is necessary and becomes clear as such through proportional defense. Because estoppel is traditionally used to justify proportionate self-defense, it necessarily presupposes some criterion for determining when two claims are comparable. Consider this question: "When are two conflicting claims similar enough that they should be evaluated under the same principle?" There must be an answer to this question, otherwise proportionality has no coherent meaning. The answer cannot simply be when two claims are identical in every way including subject. —Estoppel Implies Interchangeability— Imagine a disabled person stuck in a wheelchair. Due to his disability, he is unable to restrain or otherwise thwart a trespasser with an ordinary use of force, instead his only practical means of resistance may be limited to verbal objection and the use of a firearm within his reach. Now imagine a drunk homeless person enters his home at night and begins stealing food from his refrigerator. To argue the disabled person is not allowed to use lethal force at all because the trespassers' life is worth more than the disabled person's property, is to deny the disabled person any property rights at all, simply due to his physical limitations. The principle becomes: "A person's rights depend on their abilities" This is not a self-defense right, and libertarians would immediately object to this and call this use of the estoppel invalid. The reason ultimately comes back to interchangeability of persons. Just because the disabled person is disabled, doesn't change what claims are inconsistent to object to. If we apply interchangeability, this problem goes away. Looking at interchangeability, if the positions were exchanged, the able-bodied person would not accept a rule that reduced his own rights merely because he occupied a disabled person's position. Likewise, the intruder could not consistently object to the disabled person's defense while claiming that, if he were in the disabled person's position, he would still reject being denied the only effective means of protection. If proportionality is not evaluated according to interchangeable claims, then the disabled person's rights become contingent upon his physical abilities rather than the principle being defended. Proportionality itself becomes position-dependent, contradicting the reciprocal structure estoppel requires. Without interchangeability, the estoppel cannot distinguish between genuine justification and arbitrary privilege. Any contradiction can always be avoided by assigning oneself a special exemption. Therefore, proportionality cannot be determined by comparing physical acts alone. It must compare the competing justifications, by looking at claims, not the specific subjects of a justification. This is precisely what interchangeability requires. —Reciprocity, Interests, and the Structure of Claims— Interchangeability reveals a deeper requirement. A difference between people can matter only if the reason for treating them differently survives exchanged positions. Otherwise, the difference is reduced to a mere basis for privilege, violating interchangeability. Once it is established that justifications must survive interchangeable positions for self-defense rights to apply via estoppel, reciprocity follows for the estoppel too. A person cannot demand a principle for others that they would reject if they occupied the other position. This does not imply all interests have equal priority though, what it does imply is that every person's interests must be capable of counting as reasons within the justification, which is equal standing, not equal result. Every normative claim implicitly advances some account of which interests are protected, restricted, or overridden. Bodily rights claims protect interests in physical security, property claims protect an interest in specific resources and objects, contract claims protect people's ability to communicate and act upon their own interests with others cooperatively. Whenever force is invoked against a person, one person's interests are being protected against competing interests. The actual question is, "Is this conflict resolved by a principle that can be accepted from either side, or does it depend upon one side being inherently privileged?" —Subordination violates Interchangeability— The truth derived from the estoppel is that not every property claim is automatically justified by someone claiming ownership over something. Suppose a property owner claims that ownership alone automatically settles every conflict of interests involving that property. Such a case would fail interchangeability, it is the same special pleading as previously described, and creates the same problem relative to the estoppel. This logic can be taken further. Consider a racist landlord who wants to evict a tenant simply for being black. The lease doesn't explicitly say the landlord can do that, but he wrote into the lease that he has the final say. The relevant claim is not merely: "I wish to control my property". That claim may be compatible with a general principle of ownership, but the claim is so general that it fails the aforementioned interchangeability. We must actually discuss the relevant claim at hand, and this claim comes out to be: "My interest in racial exclusion overrides your interest in equal participation." This claim violates interchangeability. Exchange races, suppose the landlord was black and the excluded tenants were white, and the justification immediately collapses. The person defending exclusion would not accept the principle if they occupied the excluded position, the problem is therefore not property ownership itself but rather that the justification inherently subordinates one person's interests to another. Such a claim defeats itself through estoppel. —Intrinsic Subordination— The estoppel does not imply all differences between people are illegitimate. Rather, different roles can be justified based on knowledge and claims of justified authority, a doctor may have limited authority in the context of medicine because the distinction rests on expertise and consent, a parent may have limited authority over a child due to the relationship involving responsibility and dependency, a property owner may have limited authority over a resource if the justification for that authority passes reciprocal evaluation. A legitimate distinction is based on a reason that remains valid when positions are exchanged. An illegitimate distinction is one whose justification depends upon assigning one person's interests inherently greater justificatory standing than another's. The estoppel argument rejects the second distinction. —Deriving the Anti-Abuse Principle— The examples demonstrate the same underlying failure, the problem is not that interests conflict, as such conflict is avoidable. It is also not merely that outcomes differ, different outcomes may arise from legitimate reasons. The problem is a specific type of coercive justification: "A justification where the frustration of another person's interests is not merely an effect of the rule, but part of what the rule is fundamentally doing." In such cases, the action or institution does not merely create an unequal result, but requires another person's interests be treated as having inferior standing in the justification itself. The frustration is built into the principle being defended. The frustration of interests is not an accidental consequence of applying the norm, but rather a part of what the norm itself is built to accomplish. Thus, from a correct account of estoppel, we derive the Anti-Abuse Principle of Yoggism: —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. —Conclusion— The use of "inherent" means the frustration of interests is intrinsic to the content and justification of the action itself, not merely an external consequence that isn't generalizable. An action violates this principle when defending it requires saying: "this person's interests count less because this person occupies X position". Such a claim cannot survive interchangeability, it cannot satisfy reciprocity. Thus, such a claim defeats itself through the estoppel. This estoppel argument does not only apply after rights are established, instead it can be used to derive rights through the AAP. Assuming rights to apply the estoppel to is begging the question and risks self-contradiction. Rights are themselves claims, claims that face a justificatory burden when it comes to whether using force or otherwise to defend such rights is justified. That is not exempt from the estoppel. To accept the estoppel as normative for justifying self-defense rights, thus implies some semblance of reciprocity such that the Anti-Abuse Principle is a consequence. An action inconsistent with the AAP thus cannot be defended via estoppel. —Universal Application— The estoppel argument applies whenever a coercive claim is made against a sentient being whose interests are such that the claim's justification can be meaningfully evaluated. For example, we can take the original example at the onset and reuse it with a non-human animal. Bob punches a dog, so now if the dog hits Bob back, Bob loses the ability to consistently make a claim against the hit, because Bob already set the norm that hitting is justified. Bob, by punching, is said to be 'estopped' from objecting to the dog's self-defense. Any argument that Bob being a special species is a direct recreation of the interchangeability problem from before, creating the same problem as saying Bob is a special sex or Bob is a special person who has the right to punch anyone but nobody else is allowed to punch him. Suppose Bob claims humans may abuse dogs because they are humans. If positions are exchanged by species, Bob would no longer accept the principle. The justification thus depends on which party occupies the privileged role rather than upon a reciprocal reason. This violates interchangeability. If defensive force is justified because the coercive claim fails estoppel, then that failure does not depend on who performs the defensive act. The same failed justification may thus be resisted by third parties acting to defend the victim. Therefore, accepting the dog has the right to defend themselves, also implies via estoppel that other beings, including other humans, are allowed to defend the dog from unjustified transgressions. The estoppel therefore is not restricted to human beings. It applies whenever there exists a sentient being whose interests are capable of being the object of a coercive claim that can be said to be justified or unjustified. A being need not consciously formulate moral arguments for this to be true, rather it is enough that the being possesses interests and preferences such that it is meaningful to ask whether another person's claim against those interests is justified. If it is meaningful to evaluate a claim against a being as justified or unjustified, that abuse against them is unjustified, or that it is inconsistent to object to that being's proportionate defense, then estoppel already applies. Restricting estoppel only to members of a particular species would simply recreate the same arbitrary privilege that interchangeability rejects. —The Absolute Interest Conclusion— This directly implies by the estoppel that animal cruelty is unjustifiable and impossible to consistently defend. If we accept animal cruelty as unjustifiable this implies a human attacking another human for abusing an animal, is justified, and if the animal abuser pulls out a weapon, the other human gains the right to defend themselves with lethal force. This implies humans have the right to defend animals from other humans with lethal force. If every sentient being possesses interests that cannot be assigned lesser justificatory standing merely because of species or other arbitrary classification, then ethical justification must treat the recognition of the value of their interests as universal. From this we derive the Absolute Interest Conclusion: 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 is not an optimization principle, but an upholding of interests as a value. —The Problem with Utilitarianism vs. Principles— This also functions as an argument against Utilitarianism and similar consequentialist arguments. Under Utilitarianism, in an isolated circumstance, we are forced to conclude that if a human attacks an animal, they must not be stopped with lethal force, because killing a human is worse than killing an animal at least if the animal will have a shorter lifespan than the human. Estoppel Ethics goes in direct contradiction of this by claiming based on principle, that consequences are not the end all be all of ethics, and animal rights are derived from principle. Thus even in a isolated circumstance, killing a human to defend an animal is justified if necessary. –Deduction of Estoppel Ethics– –Definitions: (Estoppel): A person is estopped when they cannot consistently object to a principle that their own conduct has already asserted. (Proportionality): The requirement that a defensive response bear an appropriate relationship to the conduct it answers. (Right): A right is a guaranteed permission that an action, interest, or property is justified, together with the normative validity of defending it as necessary. –Premises: (P1): Estoppel rejects any justification that requires a special exemption from the principle it invokes. (P2): Estoppel grounds the justified self-defense of existing rights. (P3): Differences in physical ability can prevent equally situated persons from using equivalent defensive acts or escalating force in the same manner. (P4): Any account of proportionality that denies self-defense rights solely because of physical ability or social position undermines the rights estoppel is meant to justify. (P5): Estoppel evaluates whether the claims involved in coercive conflicts are justified. (P6): A coercive justification inherently subordinates another person's interests when it gives those interests lesser justificatory standing solely because of that person's position. (P7): A coercive action is legitimate only if its justification survives estoppel. –Logic: (L1): From (P2 + P4), if estoppel grounds rights, then proportionality cannot deny self-defense rights solely because of physical ability or social position. (L2): From (L1 + P3), proportionality cannot be determined solely by comparing equivalent physical acts, because physical differences would make the availability of self-defense depend upon ability. (L3): From (P2 + L2), the standard used to determine proportionality must preserve the justified self-defense of rights rather than depend upon differences in physical ability. (L4): From (P5 + L3), proportionality must evaluate the justification of defensive actions rather than merely the physical equivalence of those actions. (L5): From (P1 + L4), a justification that depends only upon who holds a position rather than independent reasons supporting the position implies a special exemption and fails estoppel. (L6): From (P6 + L4), a coercive justification that inherently subordinates interests depends upon treating one person's interests as having lesser justificatory standing because of their position. (L7): From (L5 + L6), coercive justifications that inherently subordinate interests fail estoppel because they rely on position-dependent standards. (L8): From (L7 + P7), coercive actions based on inherently subordinating justifications are illegitimate, while proportionate resistance to such conduct is legitimate. –Conclusion: From (L6 + L7): Therefore, actions that inherently subordinate another person's interests are illegitimate, while proportionate resistance to such conduct is legitimate as self-defense.

Premise by Premise Defense Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Premise by Premise Defense of Deductions [Full Text] –Premise by Premise Defense of Deductions– Major parts of Yoggism, including Justification Ethics, include a deduction that neatly derives the conclusion of the text through logical deduction through a set of premises, such that if the premises are true then the conclusion is true. This section is dedicated to a defense of each premise of these deductions. –Justification Ethics– (P1): Normative Justifications that derive normative claims in the form “you ought to accept X”, must include at least one normative premise. --This is justified by the general version of the is/ought gap, which is simply the claim that purely descriptive statements cannot directly logically derive normative statements. "Suffering exists" and "Murder causes suffering" do not on their own logically imply "You ought not murder" because that requires the extra premise "You ought not cause suffering" for the conclusion to follow. --A normative justification by the definition used in the text, is a deduction that proves specific kind of normative claim, thus the gap applies. --To suggest this premise is wrong would be to claim that some purely descriptive statements can derive normative statements, which is a logical category error. (P2): Purely descriptive facts and logical truths alone cannot derive normative claims. --This is the general version of the is/ought gap, that purely descriptive statements cannot directly derive normative statements. To reject it is a category error. (P3): Normative axioms and assumptions cannot constitute an ultimate justification, because the axioms themselves are left unjustified and can be used to support contradicting claims. --If a claim relies on an assumption that only you accept, and that others reject, and you cannot derive that assumption from some greater premise where it itself you can prove, then you haven't actually defended your claim. I can claim "you ought not murder" based on the principle that "murder is wrong" or "human dignity" but that doesn't actually prove the claim at hand. --If you can prove an assumption true then it isn't really an 'axiom' in the way relevant to Justification Ethics, and instead the justification of that assumption itself collapses back into one of the categories outlined in Justification Ethics. --The idea that axioms should be justified is itself presupposed by debate, as debate includes the right of interlocutors to ask "why?" to an arbitrary position. (P4): Normative Justifications can derive normative claims by appealing to someone's interests, I.E. “you ought to buy a washing machine” from an interest in clean clothes. --Oughts from Logic demonstrates from basic rational instrumentality that it is rational to fulfill your interests in the best way possible with respect to other rational standards pertaining to you. Imagine a stick of dynamite, we can say that rationally, a lit stick of dynamite ought to explode, relative to its own tendency to follow the laws of physics. --Relative to your tendency to act according to your interests, where "interest" is simply that which your behavior tends towards, and relative to the idea that rationally, if you are already acting in accordance with some goal, you ought choose any of the most rational actions you can to best achieve the goal, we can derive that you ought rationally to best fulfill your interests in this sense. --Rationally speaking, it is irrational to try to get ice cream from an ice cream truck by jumping into a sinkhole randomly. If you accept this, that same rationality is what is applied to the premise, allowing you to prove "you ought to buy a washing machine", through an appeal to your interests and rational ways to fulfill them. (P5): Normative justifications must derive their normativity from premises their target is rationally required to accept, as otherwise their target is not rationally required to accept the claim, leaving it unjustified. --A Normative Justification, as used in Justification Ethics, is some proof that a specific normative ethical claim is a claim you rationally ought to accept. Such a rational ought must be derived from premises that similarly a target rationally ought to accept, because if the premises need not be accepted, the conclusion need not be either. --Deduction works as premises that imply conclusions, if it is not true that the premises are that which someone rationally ought to accept, then the conclusion has not been proven to be that which someone rationally ought to accept. It still might be, but that has not been shown. --Thus, the conclusion being a claim that someone rationally ought to accept, has not been justified. (P6): In deduction, claims are derived from premises; such premises are either descriptive facts, logical truths, interests, axioms, or presuppositions; or reducible thereto. --No other category exists. Tautologies are logical truths, moral claims are just axioms/assumptions, agency is a presupposition argument, definitions aren't really premises at all but rather tell you what terms or objects a premise states one of these categories apply to. --Other categories are reducible, imagine a probabilistic claim like "there is a 90% chance this machine will break down". This is a descriptive statement, not a normative one. If it is based on something specific like Bayesian reasoning, then it is a logical truth relative to that discipline, and the discipline itself is an axiom. --To reject this premise, you must provide a premise that definitively does not fit in any of these categories, while also being able to prove conclusions one rationally ought to accept. (P7): Presuppositions arising from norms of some external process, cannot consistently ground normative ethical claims, as such process can be evaded and its norms need not apply outside the process. --This premise is not guaranteed to be true, but a counterexample is yet to be exposed with the exception of basic rationality. Any presupposition of a norm of some activity jumping to anything greater is heavily suspect. --Kant's transcendental arguments based on agency have hidden normative assumptions within them. --Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics fails to actually prove false any arguments given in argumentation, and also does not prove norms accepted as part of argumentation are necessarily relevant outside of argumentation. --It should also be noted that this premise does not contradict Justification Ethics itself because Justification Ethics uses the "action justificatory burden" presupposed by the idea that beliefs and claims should be justified, an idea presupposed by debate. The reason why is that these are not simply norms of some external activity, but rather necessary to engage in the framework of justifying claims itself. See "Rebuttals to Objections" for more detail on this. (P8): If a norm is merely presupposed by participation in an inevitable or universal process, that fact alone cannot justify a normative ethical claim as such presuppositions reduce to mere descriptive facts. --An objection to this premise is that presuppositions such as "you should act to protect yourself" are universal for humans because humans have a self-preservation instinct. The problem is, such a normative claim doesn't actually follow, because the actual "presupposition" is merely the fact that being alive as a human almost always entails self-preservation as something you are acting according to. You acting according to that instinct is a descriptive fact and nothing else. --Descriptive facts indeed cannot directly derive normative ethical claims, which is all the premise actually says. It is true such descriptive statements can inform rationale, like how acting according to X principle means you should act most rationally in regards to the principle, but that doesn't imply you should act according to the principle in the first place. --Therefore, the literal meaning of the premise is still correct, which is all the proof needs to follow. –Oughts from Logic– (P1): All people have interests. --Interests are defined simply as that which a sentient being's behavior tends towards, as desires and goals, ends a being is acting towards. For people who are awake and currently sentient, this premise is true by definition. (P2): All people act in accordance with the interests they have, and prioritize interests they hold with Intrinsic Value. --For a person or other being to act in accordance with an interest, is for their behavior to tend towards the interest. For interests the being currently has, this is again true by definition. --The prioritization of interests they hold with intrinsic value is irrelevant to this proof, but it is also definitionally true, as Yoggism defines an intrinsic interest as an interest that one acts towards regardless of external factors to some extent. This is a prioritization. (P3): Some actions are better than others at fulfilling interests. --This is a descriptive fact. If you accept that someone running to an ice cream truck to get ice cream is being dumb by jumping into a sinkhole randomly, then you accept some actions are better than others at accomplishing some goal. --You are analyzing these defenses in favor of some goal, and you probably already recognize by reading this that actually reading this is more in favor of that goal than eating the device you are using to read this. (P4): Rationally, if you light a stick of dynamite, relative to the laws of physics, and an object’s tendency to follow the laws of physics, it ought to explode. --This is one of the more interesting premises. It is definitionally true again, but the ought here is an implicative ought, the idea is similar to saying that 1+1 ought to equal 2 relative to how arithmetic works. That ought is a rational ought, rationally you should do this or that, in the sense that if you don't, you are irrational. Rationality is a standard that implies certain things, that is all. --To deny this premise is to deny the logic of implication itself, which would nullify your own objection. (P5 from P4): Rationally, if you are acting in accordance with an interest, you ought to choose any of the most rational actions you can, to best fulfill the interest. --This is logically equivalent to Premise 4 as long as it is also accepted that "most rational actions" also requires acting with coherence to other rational standards that may weigh over your interests. --Such standards are very hard to prove, but Justification Ethics itself is an example of it. If you accept that actions should be justified, and you accept Justification Ethics, then acting in a way that cannot be justified relative to interests, is irrational, even if that action is consistent with your own interests. --You only rationally ought to fulfill an interest if you are currently acting in accordance with it already, and some interests are overall irrational to act according to in the first place. You have the ability to change what interests you are acting in accordance with, and sometimes you should. --As long as that caveat is accepted, this premise follows. –Inherent Interest Theory– (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. --Inherent Interest Theory is an addition upon Justification Ethics. This premise is definitionally correct, Justification Ethics claims that normative ethical claims can only be derived through an appeal to interests. --For such ethic to be accepted while it derives contradictory conclusions is for the ethic to contradict itself, which causes the standard of Normative Justification to break down. --A Normative Justification is a deduction that proves a claim in the form "you rationally ought to accept X". Such a deduction is meaningless if it contradicts itself. (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. --Statements in general can require different assumptions to be correct. Whether these assumptions are themselves true is its own question, which is where the epistemic cost comes from. --For normative ethical claims, as their justification must ultimately rest on interests according to Justification Ethics, this then implies the justificatory burden of the claim rests on the assumptions required for the claim to be true. These assumptions are themselves claims upon interests, thus their justification rests on these interests. (P3): The justification of an intentional action toward another person makes a normative claim concerning the interests affected by that action. --This is only false if an action is somehow entirely neutral to the interests of the person affected by it, implying they weren't affected by it at all. If this is the case, that person's interests do not grant it extra justificatory burden under Inherent Interest Theory, so the action can't really be said to be "toward another person" or toward said person it is hypothetically neutral to. (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. --Appealing to absolute inaction renders the distinction meaningless because absolute inaction doesn't really exist, if simply walking on the sidewalk not doing much of anything constitutes an action, and the distinction between action and inaction is binary, then all actions are of the same justificatory burden and suddenly all actions are unjustifiable because all actions frustrate some arbitrary interest. --This causes justification to collapse which contradicts the assumption that some actions are justified, which is necessary for the question of justification to make sense at all. (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. --This premise is specifically talking about differences in the epistemic cost of claims required to justify intentional actions. --To deny differences in this cost is to deny the justificatory burden differences between actions, which is a rejection of the action spectrum and just like in P4, causes justification to collapse. (P6): The degree to which an action interferes with the fulfillment of interests determines how those interests are affected by the action. --What it means for an action to interfere with the fulfillment of interests is for it to frustrate or fulfill interests. The degree of interference then determines the specifics of how interests are frustrated and in what circumstances. (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. --This is based on the definition of interest entanglement and of inherent frustration. --Some actions, such as punching someone, are more inherently frustrating to the someone's interests than simply walking down the street wearing a blue shirt. --This distinction is that the action of punching someone is frustrating in a way intrinsic to the content of the action itself, rather than to external conditions. More explicitly, this frustration is intrinsic to the content of the action, relative to the act of simply wearing a blue shirt. --Relative to that, it is much more intrinsic to the content of the action. This then makes it more inherently frustrating.

Normative Will Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Normative Will [Full Text] Only sentient beings, defined as entities that possess subjective experience, have interests relevant to Justification Ethics and Yoggism more broadly. Below is an explanation as to why, and the logical basis for how rationalism, normative value of preferences, and Justification Ethics all connect. --Yogg Normative Will-- For sentient beings with interests, their behavior can be described relative to more than just the laws of physics as a standard. A water bottle cannot behave irrationally, yet sentient beings can, relative to their interests and relative to the value of truth. This grants a way of describing the existence of wants, of desire, prescribing normative value. The Normative Will of sentient beings is the difference in volition and ability to resist instinct, the ability to act both rationally and irrationally relative to rational standards and relative to one’s own interests, and the ability to act in contradiction with naturally selected preferences. Normative Will is therefore the capacity for normative evaluation of behaviors relative to standards beyond the mere laws of physics; including rationality, ethics, and personal preferences. Every sentient being possesses some degree of this Normative Will, and the stronger the Normative Will, the more clearly Justification Ethics applies; as under strict instinct or structural constraint, both appeals to non-self-interest and adherence to argumentative norms become impaired. Non-sentient life has preferences that can only be described and evaluated from the outside, thus normative evaluation can only measure behaviors relative to their consistency with physical laws, in which case the "behavior" or functioning, of non-sentient life, should never deviate. --Normative Will and Virtue-- Normative Will is thus the grounding capacity that makes interests ethically authoritative. How such dispositions are exercised is thus the grounding of an Interest-based definition of Virtue and Duty, where others should be recognized according to Justification Ethics, as normatively authoritative sources of reason, and holders of the basis of normative value, interests themselves. --Absolute Interest Conclusion-- --Connecting to Justification Ethics-- Justification Ethics is the idea that rational justification presupposes an appeal to the Normative Value of Interests themselves. If you interact with a water bottle, you need not justify your actions to the water bottle, because rationally justifying a claim of "This water bottle ought to accept X idea" makes no sense. The water bottle is not a rational actor at any level. For sentient beings this isn't true. Consider the interaction of "I will steal this child's candy". How can you rationally justify such an interaction? The child would object, and the child's cognition should be complex enough to be able to judge the action on rational grounds, thus the objection is of rational weight. Thus, rational justification requires you to be able to prove "the child ought rationally to accept my interaction as non-contradictory". This is impossible, because you cannot: 1. Prove it's positively rational to steal candy based on rationalism alone, with no explicit or implicit appeal to normative value. 2. Prove it's legitimate to steal candy relative to the normative value of Interests, as the action is inherently frustrating and without reason. Therefore, stealing candy from a child is rationally unjustifiable. Therefore, Normative Will is the way to measure how strictly Justification Ethics applies. --Animal Rights-- Justification Ethics, which implies the Normative Value of Interests, can apply to any sentient being where their cognition is complex enough to judge a given action on rational grounds, relative to the standards or complexity of the action and its affects. In the "stealing candy from a child" example, the child's cognition is complex enough to be able to object to the behavior in a way that makes sense. Similar logic applies to animals, you can simply replace "child" with "monkey/dog/bird/earthworm" and it's fine. Since preference is present in all sentient beings, those beings can object to behavior based on their preferences. Those beings do have the ability to act rationally and irrationally relative to their interests, and relative to how they should act relative to the truth, making it possible to define "rational oughts" that apply to them. If you try to kill a dog for no reason other than you want to, it is impossible to make an argument such that "the dog ought rationally to accept your interaction as non-contradictory". This is impossible, because you cannot: 1. Prove it's positively rational to harm the dog based on rationalism alone, with no explicit or implicit appeal to normative value. 2. Prove it's legitimate to harm the dog relative to the normative value of Interests, as the action is inherently frustrating and without reason. Since the dog has the ability to judge your behavior based on their own preferences, and any attempt to justify your behavior has to appeal to their preferences, your actions are unjustifiable. --Obtaining the Absolute Interest Conclusion-- It has thus been shown that Normative Will is the appropriate measure on how strictly Justification Ethics applies. Killing a dog is unjustifiable because the dog has the ability to rationally object to it, same with killing a monkey, or a child, or a cow, or a human. The logical consequence of this is that any entity that is sentient with Interests, has Justification Ethics apply to it to the rational extent. Any unnecessary inherent frustration of their interests is thus illegitimate as it cannot be justified without appealing either to Interest-free Rationalism, which doesn't work, or appealing to the Normative Value of Interests by trying to appeal to their own standards, which is contradictory. Therefore, the Fulfillment of Interests of all sentient beings, in all reference frames; with priority to Inherent, Rational Interests as a value, is sustained. --The Action Spectrum and the Killing of Animals-- Does this all imply that, long-term, society should abstain from meat production in favor of alternatives? Does this imply it is unethical to kill an animal for meat if you can help it? The answer is unambiguously yes, however unfortunate it is for those who work in slaughterhouses it may be. Does this imply it is wrong to kill an animal for meat out of necessity? Actually no, not necessarily. In-fact this question also explains why it may be okay for someone to steal food from a grocery store out of necessity. The action spectrum holds the answer. Justification Ethics applies to actions, giving them a justificatory burden that is bound to interests. However, this can be applied more broadly. Divergence in behavior represents action as opposed to inaction, passive behavior. This distinction between action and inaction is necessary for the idea that actions and propositions implied by them should be justified at all, as otherwise everything is an action against someone else. There must be a way to measure not only frustration but what qualifies as true interference. As such, certain things may hold a different justificatory burden. If someone has to kill an animal to eat, to choose not to do that is arguably a far more active choice than to diverge from their core impulses. In the same way, stealing food is also permissible as a natural outcome of impulses. This does imply the animal you are trying to hunt still has a right to defend itself from you though. Neither party is in the right and neither is in the wrong, both are simply trying to survive. Attempting to survive need not incur a justificatory burden as it is not divergent behavior. --What is a Rational Agent? What about theories of God?-- Below is an explanation as to what forms of sentience or some third, God-like form of being, could mean for rationalism. What if a being exists that is not held under the laws of physics, but rather is the originator of the laws of physics themselves? This idea is taken up assuming "the laws of physics" corresponds to some sort of fundamental law of existence; not the inventive and technically constructivist laws humans come up with to describe their observations. This separates an actual God from mere builders of a simulated world, those builders would still be held under some *real* laws of physics, whereas God is the originator of physics. Non-sentient robots cannot act rationally or irrationally, their behavior can only be measured relative to the laws of physics. It doesn't matter to sentient beings what non-sentient robots do to each-other, there is no philosophical reason to care. Sentient beings' actions can be measured relative to their interests, as well as the laws of physics. They always follow the laws of physics, but they do not always best act to fulfill their interests and thus have the capacity to act irrationally. We could imagine a third category of being, where this third being’s actions might be best measured by some third standard outside of the laws of physics, and interests. For such a being, it may have no reason to care about human actions, since it doesn't measure the validity of actions based on interests, but rather some greater construct. This third being could be a God, the top of the value hierarchy, where rational justification breaks down as they are beyond the concept of rationalism itself, or they are above the concept of interests in such a way where they are their interests, they are one and the same thing and thus can never act in a way that is invalid, and are thus utmost rationality itself. This seems to break the whole concept of rationalism though, because if it's definitionally impossible for God to contradict themselves, and God being an infinite being can justify and let be true anything, then it is also impossible for there to be separate true and false statements, which means everything is both true and false. If God breaks rationalism, then all arguments for God, and all arguments prescribing behavior to God, and all arguments prescribing oughts from God, arguing what to do based on God, etc, don't make any sense because their premises destroy their own structure. Thus, reason, rationalism, argumentation, and objective truth itself, are ontologically separate from God, faith, and any other unprovable spiritual beliefs that ultimately stem from God.

Justification Ethics Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Justification Ethics [Full Text] See the deductive arguments only, here: [Deduction of Interests as a Value] Why Interests are an appropriate candidate for normative ground at all: [Oughts from Logic] –Justification Arguments presuppose the Normative Value of Interests– A Normative Justification as used here, means a deductive argument deriving a conclusion in the form "you ought to accept/believe X". Such an argument must derive its conclusion from premises. Since the conclusion is a normative one, it contains "You ought", that normative conclusion must be derived from normative premises. Here, the different types of premises that can be used to derive claims can be identified. These are: 1. Truth Claims (true facts about the world, is-statements) 2. Reason (logical truths, A=A, if A implies B and A is true then B is true, I think therefore I am) 3. Interests (wants, desires, preferences, goals; of some sentient being) 4. Axioms (assumptions, statements assumed to be true without justification) 5. Presuppositions (norms presupposed by things actors are already doing) Any argument entailing normative force must rationally justify that normative force via one or more of these types of premises. Immediately the problem is that due to what is called the is/ought gap, truth and reason cannot justify normative (ethical) force, the type of normativity that governs apparently logically neutral behaviors like "you ought not murder". Is-statements, and logical tautologies, cannot directly derive normativity of this sort. Axioms also cannot fully derive ethical normativity, not in a way that is guaranteed to apply to the recipient, because the axioms themselves definitionally cannot be justified. Normative claims that are supposed to apply to specific people, derived from axioms like "Murder is wrong", are thus impossible to rationally justify. –Presuppositions and Non-Ethical Normatives– The one type of normativity that can be derived is normative rationalism, the idea that rationality and reason have action-guiding value. This can be derived through presuppositions, as engaging in argumentation or accepting deductive arguments based on their logical weight presupposes that rationality can have this action-guiding value. This rationality though cannot derive normative ethical claims on its own, and every attempt to do so from Kantianism, Argumentation Ethics, Contractualism, have had to assume extra normative claims that cannot be justified in and of themselves. –Interests CAN Justify Normative Claims– Interests however, and the value of them, are the one type of premise that when appealed to actually can derive normative claims. Imagine a deductive argument that sets out to prove "You ought to buy my washing machine". This is a normative claim, so you can't derive the ought from pure logic. You also cannot derive the ought from truth claims, and appealing to "Washing machines are good" as an axiom isn't helpful. Yet if you appeal to "You want clean clothes" then suddenly it is possible to derive "You ought to buy my washing machine". Of course for the conclusion to be normative, that premise must also be normative, therefore "You ought to achieve your end of getting clean clothes" must be true at least relative to the person the conclusion is meant to apply to. –Interests from Normative Force Conclusion– Thus, only interests can service as the ultimate justification for normative ethical force, in a way where you can prove others ought to accept your claim. Therefore, any presupposition of the existence of ethical normative force, implicitly justifies the value of Interests in-order to rationally ground that normative force via justification. All arguments that function as a Normative Justification that tries to prove you ought to accept its conclusion, thus must presuppose the Fulfillment of Interests as a value as it pertains to the relevant interests of the person the argument's conclusion is meant to apply to. The only exception being arguments that prove normative claims based around pure truth, like "You ought to accept A = A". –Action-Guiding Claims should be Justified– To engage in argumentation, to engage in ethical debate at all, one presupposes that propositions regarding actions can be evaluated an d the premises they are derived from can be rightfully challenged. Argumentation functions off of interlocutors serving arguments and counterarguments to each-other, and when that argumentation focuses on defending actions, such propositions, such ethical claims, must be able to be judged on their epistemic truth or arbitrarity. To reject this is to either defend a proposition with a statement you do not justify, or to devolve to might makes right, which is not a valid ethic and contradicts the idea that such propositions should be evaluated and challenged at all, forfeiting argumentative force. Therefore, engagement in debate and argumentation presupposes one should be able to defend any proposition that is action-guiding, in a way where other people rationally ought to accept it, as otherwise the premises it is derived from can be rejected. –Normative Justifications are the appropriate standard of Ethics– Argumentation not only presupposes that action-guiding propositions may be evaluated and rightfully challenged, it also presupposes that claims requiring less assumptions and claims that pass a stronger burden of proof are decidedly stronger than claims that do not. Imagine two theories, Theory A and Theory B. Theory A passes a very high burden of proof, where under some very strong empirical standard T, you can show you ought accept A. Theory B however passes a weaker empirical standard P, and only under P can you show you ought accept B. To argue in favor of B over A, if all else is equal, is irrational, as even if both theories ultimately rely on unprovable axioms that act as foundations of their framework, one set of axioms creates a theory that passes a higher burden of proof. To reject this is to imply nonsense like the idea that "1+1=2" and "1+1=3" are equally true, because all propositions are rendered equivalent in strength, implying all claims of any framework are subjective. This forfeits the meaningfulness of argument itself. Normative Justification as used here is the standard by which you can prove some ethical claim, more specifically an action-guiding proposition, is something someone else affected by the action "rationally ought to accept". Such a standard is the strongest in its category of what it is trying to prove. A similar standard that adds extra assumptions, like "an action is one you rationally ought to accept is legitimate, if it follows utilitarianism" immediately makes you ask what grounds utilitarianism as your standard. Such a standard is subjective, and not reflective of what "ethics means", in contrast to how the core axioms of mathematics are reflective of counting itself. As such, assuming actions should be evaluated and should ultimately be provable rationally, is a much less demanding assumption to ground a standard than to simply assert a new and arbitrary standard for how to evaluate actions. Therefore, action-guiding claims should be evaluated and challenged, and any ethic that captures the function and meaning of ethics while relying solely on such claims being only evaluated relative to "what one rationally ought to accept" without the inclusion of any arbitrary standard, is an ethic that is decidedly less arbitrary than any other ethic that relies on such arbitrarity. –The Action Spectrum– Imagine Bob has an interest in wearing a red shirt. Alice has an interest in killing anyone who wears a red shirt. If we reject the notion that different actions have different justificatory burden, such that all actions and all interests are created equal, we run into an issue. Different beliefs can be action guiding and are the cause of actions, thus certain actions can imply certain beliefs and mental states that are action-guiding. If all normative claims implied by such beliefs are granted equal weight, equal 'epistemic cost', we run into this problem: Both Bob's interest in wearing a red shirt and the actions he takes as a result, as well as Alice's interest in killing anyone who wears a red shirt and the actions she takes, cannot be justified. This results in the derivation of contradictory ethical or justificatory claims. We find justification unable to resolve conflicts of any kind if both actors in a given conflict can be said to be "acting" rather than one actor being passive and the other being active. Thus to avoid this contradiction we are forced to conclude that there is a spectrum between inaction and action, that different normative claims have differing epistemic weight, that actions and the epistemic weight of the beliefs that imply them have differing justificatory burden. This is not an added assumption, rather it is a recognition that must be true for the justification of action-guiding claims to be meaningful at all. Justification Ethics establishes such justificatory burden of normative ethical claims must ultimately derive from interests, this then implies the central idea of Inherent Interest Theory. Actions that are intrinsically frustrating, or inherently subordinating to other interests, causing frustration in a way intrinsic to the content of the action itself, are illegitimate upon actions that constitute less of such justificatory burden. Some cases of what would normally come across as inaction or a lack of action, can include action within them though, like how refusing to hire someone due to a prejudice of some kind where you would have hired them otherwise, represents an unjustified proposition you are acting on to disrupt your ongoing course of action. Also, being sentient and awake means you do have some form of behavior you are acting on all the time, an elaboration of the standard is one of divergence from existing behavior, explaining examples such as stealing food to keep yourself alive by implying how to deliberately not do so is more active a decision than basic self-preservation, the most instinctual of all core impulses. From here, we finally have everything we need to derive the Anti-Abuse Principle. –Layered Justification– Imagine someone fulfilling their interests while not interacting with anyone else in a way that interferes with their interest fulfillment. This is someone acting in a way that does not frustrate against anyone else's inherent interests, where 'inherent interest' means an interest that acts as a conduit of other interests, like basic autonomy. Such fulfillment is neutral under Justification Ethics. No deduction can be made for or against the action. Yet, acts against the neutral action are explicitly unjustifiable, as they represent inherent frustration. It should also be noted that Justification Ethics cannot on its own derive a claim of positive obligation, aka an obligation to act. It only deals with the justifiability of actual actions, not inaction. This is because "interactions ought be justifiable" is presupposed by the recognition of normative value, and presupposed by argumentation. Yet, "inaction ought be justifiable" is not presupposed by either. This allows the separation of Justification Ethics into three layers. 1. Actions that are inherently frustrating or abusive under the Anti-Abuse Principle, cannot justify normative force. Actions that promote fulfillment of interests can justify normative protection. Actions that constitute fulfillment of interests while not interacting with anyone else, are neutral. To act against such behavior is still unjustifiable. 2. Inherent Interest Theory as derived, states that some actions constitute inherent frustration, and actions that are intrinsically frustrating cannot be justified against actions that are less so. 3. The concept of Retaliatory Law justifies frustration in one extra case, if it constitutes defense against inherent frustration. This is justified as proportional defense is frustration of interests in defense of interests more inherent. These then explicitly solve conflicts between interests, generating the AAP. Self-defense as a whole can be derived from the Estoppel Argument, where if one person is acting in a way that cannot be justified, they cannot consistently object to you doing something of similar weight without them justifying their original action, a contradiction. –Justifying the Anti-Abuse Principle– These building blocks then justify the Anti-Abuse Principle as a consequence. Actions that inherently frustrate against other's interests are unjustifiable, unless they constitute defense against inherent frustration. Actions that constitute fulfillment of other's interests justify normative protection. Actions that only fulfill interests of an individual, while not interacting with anyone else, are neutral, and unjustifiable to act against. Conflict between interests is measured via Inherent Interest Theory, where some actions are farther from pure inaction and represent a more intrinsic interference with others' interests, thus giving them more of a normative justificatory burden. This all then derives the Anti-Abuse Principle as the least-arbitrary ethic. —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. –Max Stirner's Egoism– This then sows the seeds for a sort of Universal Egoism, the idea that my ends matter, and yours, and everyone's. This sets up Yoggism to be the most consistent framework for ensuring the protection of the individual's self-interest, within an organized group or apart from one. This idea is a "spook to end all spooks". In Max Stirner's Egoism, a 'spook' is referred to as some action or concept meant to push you away from your own self-interest. To define a rule against creating spooks upon others, is the kind of rule a "Union of Egoists", the hypothetical social organizing envisioned by Max Stirner, advocates for. This rule is essentially exactly what the Anti-Abuse Principle is. This makes Yoggism particularly justifiable by Egoist standards, compared with other normative frameworks. Yoggism itself is a spook technically, but it is also the anti-spook. It should also be said that the only thing 'spooky' about Yoggism is its recognition of a minimal spook, the idea that actions require justification in any way. This minimal spook is then presupposed by all ethical debate. From this follows the Anti-Spook Doctrine: —The Abuse of the Spook (Anti-Spook Doctrine)— Part of the philosophy of Max Stirner was that arbitrary principles such as religious and moral principles, as well as reason itself, could become spooks against ones self-interest. If we are to derive a framework that is universal though, we can think of some actions as spooks and some as not, we can think of actions as spooks based on if they are only justifiable by a spook. Hence, some actions including abuse of authority, discrimination, or acts of violence, are spooks. In this view, Yoggism becomes the anti-spook, the spook against spooks as justifier; with Yoggism itself as the only justified spook through reason itself, a "spook to end all spooks". Some actions function as a 'spook' against the fulfillment of interests, such actions can be defined as intrinsically frustrating actions that inherently subordinate another's interests. These actions constitute abuse, norms based on such actions represent spooks of the mind against interests, and are thus the true enemy of both individual freedom and rational ethics. Therefore, actions that constitute inherent frustration through coercive frustration or subordination of another's interests, cannot be justified by any metric and are thus illegitimate. –Actions should carry Justificatory Burden– If you accept that beliefs, that is propositions, should be justified, as such is presupposed by engaging in argumentation, making it contradictory to argue that propositions don't need to be justified, then you should accept that normative claims involving actions, as propositions, have a justificatory burden. To perform intentional actions impossible to propositionally justify, meaning you cannot form a proposition that justifies the action where that proposition itself is justified, is then to imply acceptance of propositions that cannot be justified. To instead insist that your action does not reflect any proposition, any claim or belief, is to forfeit argumentative force involving your own action, as it is to render it impossible to coherently justify your actions. To reject this entirely and argue beliefs do not need justification, is to reject all deductive arguments meant to prove a claim is rational to believe. You must also reject conclusions themselves as requiring justification as conclusions guide actions, acceptance of a conclusion is merely a form of belief. This then requires forfeiting the argumentative, logical, and normative force of the objection itself, a self-contradiction. Not merely a performative, but logical contradiction. This is the problem with Egoism, with actions that cannot be justified in general, and with any ethic that rejects such justificatory standards, they cannot be proven and are merely subjective. –The Igism Dilemma– For an Egoist to take up this position is to fall for the Igism dilemma. Imagine the ideology of Igism, 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. An 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 its conclusion itself counts as a belief and suddenly cannot be justified in a way binding to any agent. –Rejection of Normative Force results in Unjustifiable Nihilism– If someone says "normative ethical force cannot be justified", they are presupposing that actions and that which is action-guiding, normativity, ought to be justified in the first place. This claim is also presupposed by argumentation and the acceptance of deductive proofs. The idea that deductive justification of actions is valuable itself, forces confrontation with the Fulfillment of Interests because interests are the only way to ground claims of justification for actions such as acts of gift-giving, eating food, violence, murder, theft, etc. To reject normative ethical force is also to reject any normative force pertaining to logically neutral actions, which is simply to embrace nihilism. –Interest-Frustration cannot be justified by Nihilistic Egoism– True Egoism requires the conclusion that it is irrational to say a strong person should not murder a disadvantaged person. Either that, or it must contradict itself. It is impossible to argue such a conclusion to someone if they are the disadvantaged, because making such an argument requires appealing to their preferences and such a conclusion contradicts them; their interest in not being attacked is clearly relevant to any argument against it, yet the argument against it can only function by granting their interests no weight. This is a blatant contradiction in the nature of justification itself. You cannot rationally justify an assertion that you can punch someone in the face for your own enjoyment, because any argument that could prove a normative claim applies to them, must appeal to some preferences they have, yet the assertion itself is contradictory to their preferences and grants their interests no weight. It also cannot be claimed that to have a preference beyond Egoism is irrational, as Egoism itself dictates that all self-interest is valid. It is only Preference as Normative Force itself, that allows for the distinction between rational and irrational interests, and it is this which allows for proper rational justification. Therefore, it is impossible to justify Egoism, it is impossible to justify behavior through Egoism, it is impossible to normatively argue for Egoism in a way that applies to anyone with an interest against it, and it is also self-contradictory to accept an argument for Egoism as it always contradicts your own rationally-justifiable preferences. Under Egoism, it is also impossible to successfully argue against actions consistent with Yoggism. Under any system it is theoretically impossible to argue against actions consistent with Yoggism, as doing so requires extra assumptions that need not apply. –Interests as Normative Value, Deductively Proven– We can now demonstrate this proof step-by-step: --Basic Clarifications-- A. Interests are not presuppositions onto themselves. This argument is based on the concept of examining that which can be justified relative to someone who already rationally values their own interests. The normative value of interests is agent-relative, someone who values nothing at all simply forfeits all normative force and cannot justify their actions or claims. B. In this context we can assume normative claims deduced from premises, must require at least one normative premise; this is justified by the is/ought gap. C. Interests are defined as any preferences, wants, desires, goals, that which a being's behavior tends towards; they are inherently and definitionally action-guiding. --The Argument-- –Definitions: (Normative Justification): A deductive argument that derives a normative claim in the form “you ought to accept X” or “you ought not act against or inconsistent with X”. (Ultimate Justification): A normative justification of a claim that does not ultimately depend on unjustified normative premises, except for the rules of logic themselves. (Descriptive Facts): Is-statements, claims that are not normative but explain facts about the world, I.E. “the sky is blue”. (Interests): That which the behavior of a sentient being tends towards. (Interests as a value): The appeal to interests as the source of normativity that derives a normative claim. –Premises: (P1): Normative Justifications that derive normative claims in the form “you ought to accept X”, must include at least one normative premise. (P2): Purely descriptive facts and logical truths alone cannot derive normative claims. (The is-ought gap) (P3): Normative axioms and assumptions cannot constitute an ultimate justification, because the axioms themselves are left unjustified and can be used to support contradicting claims. (P4): Normative Justifications can derive normative claims by appealing to someone's interests, I.E. “you ought to buy a washing machine” from an interest in clean clothes. (P5): Normative justifications must derive their normativity from premises their target is rationally required to accept, as otherwise their target is not rationally required to accept the claim, leaving it unjustified. (P6): In deduction, claims are derived from premises; such premises are either descriptive facts, logical truths, interests, axioms, or presuppositions; or reducible thereto. (P7): Presuppositions arising from norms of some external process, cannot consistently ground normative ethical claims, as such process can be evaded and its norms need not apply outside the process. (P8): If a norm is merely presupposed by participation in an inevitable or universal process, that fact alone cannot justify a normative ethical claim as such presuppositions reduce to mere descriptive facts. –Logic: (L1): From (P2 + P3), neither descriptive facts, purely logical truths, nor axioms or assumptions can ultimately ground justification of normative claims. (L2): From (P1 + L1), normative justifications cannot derive conclusions solely from descriptive facts, purely logical truths, axioms, or assumptions. (L3): From (P4 + P5), normative justifications can derive normative claims by deriving the normativity from an appeal to interests. (L4): From (L2 + L3), interests have the capacity to ground normative justification, whereas descriptive facts, pure logic, and axioms cannot ultimately ground normative justification. (L5): From (L4 + P6), interests and presuppositions are the only available types of premises for the normative grounding of normative claims. (L6): From (P7 + P8), presuppositions cannot consistently justifiably ground normative claims. –Conclusion: From (L5 + L6): Therefore, normative ethical justifications that consistently derive claims in the form “you ought to accept X”, must ultimately appeal to interests as a value, as otherwise they are rendered unjustifiable.

Rebuttals to Objections Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Rebuttals to possible Objections to Yoggism [Full Text] —Rebuttals to Objections— This section outlines rebuttals to several possible objections to Yoggism, including its Justification Ethics argument. The following objections refuted are as follows, in order: 1. Justification Ethics cannot reject Presuppositions without Contradiction 2. Why must Axioms require Justification? 3. Justification Ethics is just a worse version of Argumentation Ethics 4. Rejecting Interpersonal Justification doesn't make me Irrational 5. Justification Ethics is Begging the Question 6. The Anti-Abuse Principle is Poorly Defined and Cannot Ground Rights 7. The AAP cannot stop a Hoarder of Insulin without invalidating Bodily Autonomy 8. The Is/Ought Gap Objection 9. The Action Spectrum is Arbitrary 10. Why must I justify my Actions to Animals? 11. The Is/Ought Gap is Invalid 12. Yoggism actually just proves the Non-Aggression Principle 13. Rationality cannot derive Morality -Justification Ethics cannot reject Presuppositions without Contradiction- Justification Ethics contradicts itself, it says presuppositions are invalid as a way to derive normative claims, while also deriving the idea that interests of an individual can derive normative claims with respect to them, by arguing it is presupposed by instrumental rationality. It gives the example of someone wanting clean clothes, and saying you can roughly prove the normative "you ought to buy my washing machine" by appealing to their interest in clean clothes. This only works if we accept that they "ought" act rationally according to their own interests. This claim is a presupposition of debate, argumentation, and a definition of rationality in general. If presuppositions cannot ultimately derive normative claims, then interests ultimately getting normative claims via this presupposition is a contradiction. Thus Justification Ethics contradicts itself. -Rebuttal- If someone accepts a normative premise or is currently engaging in an activity that presupposes a normative premise, that premise can be used to derive a normative claim that does apply to them in the moment. A presupposition is nothing more than a claim that can be derived to be true based on another claim that is already accepted. By engaging in "peaceful conduct", you derive the claim that "you ought not hurt your friend", not as a universal rule but rather if you do hurt your friend you would no longer be engaging in peaceful conduct. As such, as long as you engage, the normative claim is presupposed that you should not hurt your friend. The problem with presuppositions and the target Justification Ethics rejects, is presuppositions that attempt to derive universal principles impossible to reject. Such presuppositions almost always involve hidden normative assumptions. Two examples of this are Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics and Immanuel Kant's transcendental argument based on agency. These both involve hidden normative assumptions and as of now no deduction with all objectively true premises that derive their conclusions has been proven. -Why must Axioms require Justification?- Why can't axioms derive normative claims? If I prove to someone that a conclusion like "they ought not murder" follows from an axiom like "human life has intrinsic value", they can't dismiss the conclusion because it has an axiom. They also must accept that they rationally ought to accept the conclusion from the premises, because my argument can be entirely valid. If they reject my axiom I can simply attempt to prove my axiom in ways they would accept, there's no problem here. -Rebuttal- Justification Ethics argues that neither raw logical truths, factual statements, presuppositions, nor axioms, can ultimately derive normative claims. This is argued through the is/ought gap, and presupposition-based arguments centered on the norms of some activity involving hidden normative assumptions to universalize any derived normative claims. When it comes to axioms, the reasoning is that in-order to prove to someone the claim "you ought not murder" for example, to simply appeal to an axiom such as "human life has intrinsic value", doesn't actually prove the claim. Such a deduction does not actually prove they "rationally ought to accept murder is wrong", rather the deduction proves they "rationally ought to accept murder is wrong, given their acceptance of this axiom", and such a deduction will fail if they reject the axiom because the "given their acceptance" condition will fail. If you then attempt to further argue in favor of the axiom, or attempt to derive the axiom from other premises, then the axiom you chose isn't actually an 'axiom', it's just another premise. A true axiom, the kind of axiom Justification Ethics targets, is an assumption that is the basis of some system, a fundamental assumption that cannot be 'proven' but rather is a given. If instead you decide that your "human life has intrinsic value" axiom for example, is not a true axiom but is simply another premise, then this is a normative premise, and must be ultimately derived from another normative premise, due to the is/ought gap. As such, you haven't solved the problem at all and have simply moved the deriving of normatives back a step. Neither raw logical truths nor factual statements may prove normative claims, so you are stuck with only presuppositions, or interests themselves. True axioms as explained cannot be derived from further premises by definition, and thus cannot ultimately justify normative claims in a way others can be rationally required to accept. The only exception is the axiom that rationality matters in the first place, but pure logic doesn't derive normative ethical claims, it's limited to claims like "you ought accept 1+1=2". It should also be noted that to engage in argumentation or debate more broadly, includes the right of the interlocutor to give counterarguments, which includes the right and argumentative validity of arguing against or requesting further argument in favor of, axioms. Axioms get brought up in the context of debate wherein someone is trying to derive their conclusion from first principles, in such a context the burden of proof standard being appealed to is whether you can prove your claim follows for someone else. This is the rational interpersonal justification standard of Justification Ethics. In such a standard, axioms cannot be appealed to at a whim, they must be defended. -Justification Ethics is just a worse version of Argumentation Ethics- The idea that argumentation or debate more generally, presupposes that your opponent's interests are valuable, is simply a worse and less formal version of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics. -Rebuttal- Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics attempts to derive anarcho-capitalist concepts of self-ownership and the Non-Aggression Principle by arguing they are presupposed by engagement in argumentation and arguing that the idea of solving conflicts through argument rather than force is also presupposed by argumentation. Ultimately it attempts to derive these principles as universal. This is a transcendental argument arising from a presupposition of norms of a specific activity. Justification Ethics is very different from this, the claim of Justification Ethics is that interests are the only thing that can ultimately derive normative claims in a way others are rationally required to accept, thus Ethics must be based on interests, collapsing into Yoggism. This is not an argument about presupposed norms of some specific activity you may or may not engage in, it is not an argument that your ethical arguments are invalidated by rejecting said norms, rather it is an argument about the very logical grounds to justify deductions of claims themselves. One possible objection to Argumentation Ethics is that it cannot prove any ethical theory false, because whether an arguer is performatively contradicting themselves as they are advocating against norms presupposed during argumentation, which is a claim with its own problems, says nothing about the truth value of the arguments being provided. A utilitarian could make a detailed argument in favor of utilitarianism, and the anarcho-capitalist could claim the utilitarian is performatively contradicting themselves by arguing in favor of utilitarianism, but this does not disprove the argument they give itself. If the argument is in deductive form for example, the conclusion of it could still follow from the premises. This same objection does not work against Justification Ethics because it targets what premises can even exist for deriving normative claims, in a way that works universally. -Rejecting Interpersonal Justification does not make me Irrational- Justification Ethics only works if we assume actions should be justified in a way others rationally ought to accept, this is interpersonal justification. If I reject such justification as a standard, as an Egoist might, or if I appeal to a different standard, that does not make me irrational. -Rebuttal- The problem with Egoism is that it cannot be proven to be true, nor can it be argued for. The reason why applies to any other ethic that rejects the justification of actions. Egoism, as well as say Utilitarianism, are both ethics (one being the Stirner Anti-Ethic), that tell you how actions should be justified. Egoism says actions are merely justified relative to your own interests, Utilitarianism says actions are justified by what maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain. These are, ultimately, ethical claims over actions. Such claims cannot be proven. True egoism specifically cannot even be argued for in a way others ought accept at all because to engage in true argumentation necessitates the recognition that beliefs, propositions, have justificatory burden. Egoism rejects this by rejecting objective truth as a spook, which contradicts any argumentative force that could be used to argue for it. Utilitarianism, and any other ethic that does not inherently reject objective truth or the justification of beliefs, simply fails to be proven anyway. The conclusions given by the theory in different conflicts are conclusions, ethical claims, that cannot be proven correct without simply referring back to the theory itself. Yoggism is the only theory that can be proven to be true, whose claims can be proven to be true to those they affect, either by them being consistent with the interests of the person you're proving a claim to, or by the implied insistence that such claims can be provable at all. Argumentation about ethics at all presupposes that we recognize some ethical claims as more or less arbitrary than others, so Justification Ethics showing ethical claims must be derived from interests creates the least-arbitrary type of ethical claim. To reject this is to reject ethics which is to forfeit the ability to argue coherently about actions in the first place, which breaks your own objection. -Justification Ethics is Begging the Question- Justification Ethics doesn't prove its actual argument, it's begging the question. You could use the process of elimination present in JE to argue for any standard. Interests being the one thing that can derive normative claims is entirely arbitrary. -Rebuttal- Interests are the only thing that can derive normative claims to an arbitrary individual. If I have an interest in clean clothes, and I have money and have an interest in spending them to solve my problem, you can prove I rationally ought to buy your washing machine by appealing to instrumental rationality with respect to my interests. If we agree with the statement "It is irrational for someone looking for ice cream, to jump into a random sinkhole while walking towards an ice cream truck", then we agree that ultimately you rationally ought to fulfill your interests in the best way possible with respect to other rational standards. That other standard is Justification Ethics itself, and this all implies that your own interests can derive normative claims with respect to yourself, at the very least. This then is one of the premises that allows Justification Ethics to prove that ethical normative claims, claims beholden to others, must appeal to interests to ultimately be justifiable. The argument is not simply "interests are the basis of ethics because interests matter", rather it is "the value of interests is the only kind of premise that can derive normative claims upon others in a way that appeals to nothing more than rationality. -The Anti-Abuse Principle is Poorly Defined and Cannot Ground Rights- The Anti-Abuse Principle as stated is poorly defined and cannot ground rights or a public private split through inherent frustration. For example do I own my body? Do I have a right of bodily autonomy? If someone else's interest over my body is more inherent than my interest, then no. Imagine someone who has to run around and slap people, at least one a day, or else they will die. Do I have an obligation to let them slap me? Must I not defend myself? If so, then I have no right to bodily autonomy, no right to be free from someone slapping me if me being slapped is in service of someone's 'greater good'. -Rebuttal- This is a misuse of the concept of "inherent interests". There is no principle that can be justified that states you must maximize fulfillment of inherent interests and that not wanting someone to slap you is unjustifiable if it fails at that goal, that would be more consistent with preference utilitarianism. The Anti-Abuse Principle is instead about actions, actions being taken that frustrate others' interests in a way intrinsic to the action itself. To slap someone is inherently frustrating against their interest in not being slapped, and that action constitutes a spook against their interests in the sense that their interest in not being slapped is being ignored for your own gain, their interests are being inherently subordinated to you. This is very clearly against the Anti-Abuse Principle and comically, only makes sense if the person you are slapping is a utilitarian themselves. Otherwise, a claim against them of the sort cannot be justified. Thus under the AAP we can derive that you do in-fact have a claim of bodily autonomy, in the sense that attacks against your body that are actions, cannot be justified against you for performing what is in distinction, inaction. Inherent Interests are merely a side-product of this kind of reasoning, not the tool to measure if actions against others is necessarily justified. Inherent interests, interests that act as a conduit for other interests, are more useful when comparing two actions that are both otherwise equally weighed in terms of how much of an interference they represent. -The AAP cannot stop a Hoarder of Insulin without invalidating Bodily Autonomy- For the Anti-Abuse Principle to argue that it is justified to stop someone from hoarding insulin or distributing it at a very high price to exploit diabetic patients, is to fall into the problem of consequentialist thinking. Through this thinking one can justify actions against your own bodily autonomy if your autonomy prevents someone else from accessing some resource. For example having organs and refusing to donate a kidney. How can this be justified relative to the interests of the person who needs a kidney transplant? To claim you have a right over your organs under Yoggism would mean to claim your interests are entangled with the organ, but the same logic can be applied to a pharmacy distributing insulin at a price. Yoggism thus to enforce the Anti-Abuse part of the AAP, must reject bodily autonomy. -Rebuttal- Imagine someone who needs to slap one person every day or else they will die. Does this give them a right, under Justification Ethics, to slap people? Does it mean the people being slapped are not allowed to defend themselves? The answer is a strong no, because the act of slapping is just that, an action, that cannot be justified relative to interests; unless the slapper can convince people to voluntarily let them slap them. To slap someone is an inherently frustrating action, where the frustration of interests is intrinsic to the content of the action itself, and involves a frustration of the inherent interest in bodily autonomy. For the same reasons, involuntary organ harvesting is also illegitimate. With a pharmacy selling insulin at a jacked up price rate, this is an action being performed by the business, continuously paying to supply and sell insulin, and intentionally setting the prices high. Under the Anti-Abuse Principle, such an action cannot be justified. Both conclusions are true at the same time. In terms of a pharmacy restricting access to insulin drugs, the previous argument subtly fails. Having a body is not an action against anyone, but hoarding medicine is. -The Is/Ought Gap Objection- Deriving an ought claim from an is-statement, is impossible under Hume's is/ought gap. Any is-statement, such as "the sky is blue" or "there is a person here / this person does exist", or even "suffering exists" or "suffering is a consequence of this action", cannot logically derive an ought claim. Arguing a given action is bad because it causes suffering, begs the question of whether that causation of suffering is bad itself. If it isn't the argument does not follow. That question is a normative assumption, and such normative assumptions are required to derive normative claims. Justification Ethics cannot cross the is/ought gap. -Rebuttal- The is/ought gap accepted by Justification Ethics is nothing more than the proposition that an is statement cannot derive an ought statement. Neither Justification Ethics nor any other argument within Yoggism attempts to derive an ought-statement directly from an is-statement. Instead, Justification Ethics argues that the only way to justify normative claims in defense of actions is ultimately through an appeal to interests, actions that are inherently frustrating to interests in a way intrinsic to the content of the action itself is thus illegitimate. This is the basis of the Anti-Abuse Principle and the idea that such actions should be justified is a separate question of whether you agree to participate in the context of Ethics itself. When it comes to that, the question turns into whether you can justify claims at all without accepting interpersonal justification in the sense that beliefs and the results of beliefs that guide action, should ultimately be able to be justified in a way those affected rationally ought to accept. Justification Ethics is the way to solve for this justification. Nothing here derives an is-statement from an ought-statement, and every deduction used in Justification Ethics uses normative premises that are either tautology or presupposed from debate about ethics itself. -The Action Spectrum is Arbitrary- Justification Ethics implies normative ethical claims cannot be derived in a way others rationally ought to accept, without an appeal to the interests of those involved, or an appeal to the very standard of Justification Ethics itself. Inherent Interest Theory claims that an action spectrum is valid and can be used to resolve conflicts, but this action spectrum is entirely arbitrary. There is no distinction between action and inaction, this is a farce. Rather, all behavior is action and no action can be proven to be justifiable to everyone, so this universal justification rule cannot ground Ethics. -Rebuttal- If you reject the action spectrum you must reject any way to ground Ethics through interpersonal justification. What that means is, assuming Justification Ethics is correct, you must concede that it is impossible to prove any given ethical standard in a way others are rationally required to accept. This doesn't change the fact that relative to full Yoggism, with the action spectrum included, actions consistent with Yoggism are the only actions that can be justified relative to this measure. It also doesn't change the fact that this measure is the strongest justification measure that can exist, thus Yoggism is the only ethic all are rationally required to accept if we assume the possibility of such an ethic in the first place. The action spectrum is also implied from the asymmetry of holding a proposition that requires justification, and not making a claim in the first place. Not making a claim doesn't presuppose justification, and argumentation only presupposes that claims / beliefs posited require justification. To reject that propositions, claims, require justification, is to reject the argumentative force of your own objection. To accept this asymmetry is to accept that the propositions that are action-guiding, have a justificatory burden, whereas refraining from asserting a claim does not create an equivalent justificatory burden. To argue action-guiding propositions do not need a justification is to either contradict the norms of argument or reject all argumentative force in favor of your own actions. From here, argumentation presupposes that propositions can possess differing degrees of justificatory status, some claims can be better justified than others, while some lack sufficient justification entirely. Since actions stem from action-guiding propositions, this then yields the Action Spectrum. -Why must I justify my Actions to Animals?- Justification Ethics may establish my actions against others require justification, and that such justification requires an appeal to interests. Who says this applies to animals too, though? Debate need not presuppose the justificatory burden of actions against non-humans, debate is done with humans. -Rebuttal through Justification Ethics- Debate presupposes that beliefs face a justificatory burden, to act against an animal and claim it just is to hold a followed belief in that. That belief has a justificatory burden that must be defended. The problem is, species specific claims can't be justified arbitrarily. To prove abusing an animal fulfills your interests and other humans' interests, doesn't actually prove the animal ought accept the claim, which makes it impossible to prove to another human who doesn't hold the arbitrary distinction as truth. Holding extra assumptions to justify animal abuse goes against the idea that beliefs should be justified and can be questioned, holding unquestioned assumptions in general is a problem unless said assumptions are merely the foundation of a particular and useful context, such as the axioms of basic arithmetic. As such, for any sentient being capable of acting rationally or irrationally relative to their own goals, which can be thought of as any being capable of making mistakes relative to their own goals, it can then be evaluated whether a certain claim is something they rationally should accept. This does not mean the being will actually accept it or has the necessary faculties to reason out the claim, but rather that regardless of the being's intelligence, the claim does technically follow, whether they know it or not. To reject this reasoning is to ultimately leave certain beliefs unjustified, which also creates the problem where anyone you arbitrarily refuse to debate is suddenly someone you can act against. You cannot claim to obey justification if you refuse to justify your actions in a way the beings you act against rationally should accept. Thus, actions that inherently frustrate and intrinsically subordinate interests of sentient beings in general, are illegitimate as they cannot be justified. To put it simply, prove you have the right to abuse a dog. You cannot. -Rebuttal through Estoppel Ethics- We can argue for this Absolute Interest Conclusion, that the value of interests of all sentient beings is the utmost rational standard of ethics, in another way too. The Estoppel Argument is the idea that if I attack someone, they can proportionately repeat my behavior back to me, I.E. attack me back. Self-defense ultimately comes from this idea. The justification is that if I punch Bob, I am demonstrating a claim that I have the right to punch people. If Bob returns the favor, he is demonstrating the same claim. For me to reject his claim is for me to either make an arbitrary distinction, or for me to contradict my own claim. The Estoppel can then be used to demonstrate interchangeability of persons, or beings more broadly. To make an agent-specific claim, that I have the right to punch anyone and only I have this right, is to break this interchangeability, because if we swap me and Bob then I would suddenly reject the claim, I would object to any claim giving someone else such an arbitrary right. This interchangeability can then demonstrate a principle of fairness, leading to the Anti-Abuse Principle. The important part is that two beings interacting that are a different species creates the same problematic claim as saying a specific person has a right to punch everyone else. To argue I can kill a cow because I am a human and they are a cow, breaks the interchangeability standard again because if I was a cow and they were a human, I would object to such a claim on it's arbitrarity. This kind of claim thus undermines the Estoppel and renders it trivial. To instead uphold the standard is to accept such arbitrary distinctions need not apply, thus implying from the Anti-Abuse Principle the Absolute Interest Conclusion. -The Is/Ought Gap is Invalid- Justification Ethics is based on the idea that is-statements cannot derive ought-statements, neither can axioms or arbitrary presuppositions, thus interests are the only option to ultimately derive ethical claims. This is wrong though, is-statements can derive ought-statements and to say otherwise is to make it impossible to prove truth is binding at all. If normatives, if what we should act on or should accept, is entirely separated from facts and what exists, then truth is subjective. Furthermore, we can think up an is-statement such as "Human dignity is a virtue", and then derive normatives from it. Why? Because virtues are things you ought act according to by definition. This proves is-statements can derive oughts, and the gap is just invalid. Thus pinpointing interests as "the only thing that can derive normative ethical claims" is nonsense and just assuming true the premise. -Rebuttal- The is/ought gap is not about literal sentences containing the word is. The gap appealed to in Justification Ethics is more specifically, the gap between pure descriptives and normative claims. All of Justification Ethics is based on how normative ethical claims specifically, claims about what actions beings should perform that affect one another, can be derived. These are very special types of normatives, and such normatives cannot be derived from pure descriptive claims. The statement "human dignity is a virtue" is a hidden normative claim. To be true, it relies on the normative definition of virtue, and the statement itself is thus claiming human dignity is in the normative category. This is not non-normative by any definition. A claim such as "the sky is blue" or "suffering exists" are decisively not normative, they are merely facts about the world. A claim that "one rationally ought accept the sky is blue" is normative, but it is only rationally normative, not ethically. As such you can directly derive it from the rationality presupposed during debate. Facts and truth are not subjective, they are objective and that objectivity is what is already being appealed to by comparing and evaluating reasons based on the standard itself, which is expressly being done by you reading these objections and rebuttals. To reject this standard is to reject your own objection to the standard, a contradiction. For similar presuppositions to derive ethical claims though is where Justification Ethics comes in. Interests are the only thing that can derive ethical claims, or so Justification Ethics argues, simply because non-normatives, purely descriptive claims, cannot derive normatives, and axioms are unjustifiable assumptions by definition, and arbitrary presuppositions of norms of some activity can't derive ethics by themselves. All that is left is interests. -Yoggism actually just proves the Non-Aggression Principle- Justification Ethics implies claims cannot be justified that are inconsistent with interests. Inherent Interest Theory implies that the distinction of inaction and action is necessary for any such ethic to function at all, thus actions inherently frustrating of interests are illegitimate when compared to conflicts involving non-inherent frustration. The examples given include things like "John likes to wear red shirts, Alice hates red shirts", where the latter interest is inherently frustrating against John, while John simply wearing red shirts is not inherently frustrating against Alice. It can be argued instead though, that the most inherent way to frustrate another's interests, and thus the best way to separate inaction from action, is whether an action constitutes using some property as a means to a contradictory end upon another's scarce means that is entangled with their interests. This is suspiciously close to the "contradictory ends on scarce means" idea of property aggression from Murray Rothbard's libertarianism, and this thus implies the Non-Aggression Principle. The idea of the first actor being the one who requires first justification, is true under Yoggism, where the one who acts against the first actor is the one who can justify it as defense against the first actor's unjustified actions. In this way, if for example a landlord wants to exclude a tenant from their home because the landlord is racist and the tenant is black, and the tenant attempts to enter the home anyway or use State coercion or force of any sort to get what they want, the tenant is the first actor performing contradictory ends upon the landlord's scarce means entangled with their interests. As such, the tenant is the one who faces a justificatory burden, not the landlord. The landlord thus in defending themselves, is defending against the inherent frustration of the tenant trying to make a claim over property originally entangled with the landlord. -Rebuttal- This is one of the more convincing objections to Yoggism, much better than just denying that ethical claims should be proven at all. The biggest problem with this is that "contradictory ends upon another's scarce means that is entangled with their interests" doesn't just include the person's homesteaded property under anarcho-capitalist homesteading theories, it also includes property acquired by other people that someone else's interests are intrinsically entangled with. Imagine a landlord named Yenolds has a tenant named Bob, and Yenolds wants to evict Bob because Bob likes eating crackers, This action of eviction is an action, cancelling an existing contract is also an action, and in this case it is very clearly an action that is illegitimate. If a landlord named Todd wants to exclude someone from the opportunity to buy Todd's home, because Todd is racist and the customer / tenant is black, this is in a sense a contradictory end being placed upon the home, that is indeed scarce means, and is indeed entangled with the tenant's interests; for a simple reason: Access to housing is an interest entangled with many other interests, and access to this house is an extension of that interest. It could be argued that since the customer is not already a tenant who has a rental agreement, the landlord is not acting by excluding them, for the same reason I am not acting by not letting someone slap me in the face. If someone tries to slap me, they are the actor, not me. This distinction is necessary as explained in Inherent Interest Theory. Even here though, the situation doesn't always work. For example, depending on how scarce exactly the property is, hoarding resources or using critical resources and excluding people unfairly, is overall an action against others. The act of any sense of homesteading is just that, an action. Such an action needs to not be provably unjustifiable, as such a landlord like Todd forming a business around excluding black people, is performing an action that is illegitimate, a whole series of actions in-fact. -Rationality cannot derive Morality- Justification Ethics may follow, but it does not and cannot derive a moral ought. Moral oughts can only follow from moral premises. There are no moral premises presupposed by any actions involved in debate, it is impossible for Yoggism to prove morality. -Rebuttal- Justification Ethics and its corresponding sections are not about morality at all, they are about ethics. An ethic is just a derived system of who ought to do what and who ought not do what. Yoggism is that type of system and is derived from rationalism and the nature of justifying claims itself. It may be possible though, to show that the least-arbitrary moral system possible, is either the Anti-Abuse Principle itself, or the expanded Yogg Virtue Theory ethics. The trick of saying "if we first assume morality exists, and then we assume this ethic, what is the last-arbitrary morality that follows from this ethic?" This question can be answered.

Oughts from Logic Back to Home Details Yoggism Guide Philosophy Menu More Oughts from Logic [Full Text] —Oughts From Logic— A key part of Justification Ethics is the assertion that an appeal to an agent's interest can derive normative claims that follow for that agent. This is true if you accept basic instrumental rationality, that being some actions are more or less rational than others relative to what goals you are acting according to. Imagine someone trying to get ice cream from an ice cream truck, and them randomly deciding to jump into a sinkhole. Is that action irrational relative to their interest in ice cream? Yes. If you agree that it is either rational or irrational to accept Yoggism, or accept any belief system in general, then you also are implicitly accepting this standard. An interest in Yoggism is, speaking broadly, that which a being's behavior tends towards. As such any sentient being is acting according to their interests, as they have behavior that tends towards goals and desires, their aims. Relative to the interests they have and choose to act by, they should rationally fulfill those interests in the best way they can. This then allows you to derive normative claims as to what someone ought to do relative to their interests. This is the key part of Justification Ethics, that an appeal to someone's interests can be rationally binding. This premise need not imply self-interest is all that matters all the time though, because there is more to "the best way to act" than self-interest, if you agree beliefs and actions hold a justificatory burden. That part is what Justification Ethics and the rest of Yoggism fills in. —Deduction of Interests as Rational-Normatives— –Definitions: (Ought): An outcome that ought to occur or be valid relative to some principle, is an outcome that is logically consistent with and follows some principle. If you light a stick of dynamite it ought to explode relative to the laws of physics and the construction of the stick of dynamite. That isn't a subjective normative claim, it's an objective implication based on Logic. (Rationality): Used here, the empirically measurable accuracy towards an action being able to achieve a goal, where accuracy towards a goal applies to not only narrow goals, but overall goals and behavior, and to the consistency of acting with reference to rational standards of measure. (Interest): For a sentient being to have an interest in something, this simply means their behavior is tending towards fulfilling said something, even if it is ineffective. All people have interests, and even trying to avoid their interests, is itself an interest they are acting according to. Any sentient being with stimuli-driven behavior has interests. –Premises: (P1): All people have interests. (P2): All people act in accordance with the interests they have. (P3): Some actions are better than others at fulfilling interests. (P4): Rationally, if you light a stick of dynamite, relative to the laws of physics, and an object’s tendency to follow the laws of physics, it ought to explode. (based on the definition of Ought) (P5 from P4): Rationally, if you are acting in accordance with an interest, you ought to choose any of the most rational actions you can, to best fulfill the interest. –Logic: (L1): From (P1), a person X has an interest I. (L2): From (P1 + P2), person X acts in accordance with interest I. (L3): From (P3), there might exist an action A that most rationally fulfills I. (L4): From (P2 + P5), person X rationally ought to take action A, if it exists, to fulfill interest I. –Conclusion: From (L4): Any person X, rationally ought to take any actions A that best fulfills their interests I. Thus, people rationally ought to fulfill their own interests in the most rational way possible. To be clear, this rationality includes any necessary presuppositions or transcendental arguments, if it constitutes something they must accept. See Justification Ethics. This is then the basis of, and an explanation as to why, certain normative claims can be derived via an appeal to interests, and others cannot. "You ought to buy a washing machine" for example, can be derived using an appeal to an interest in clean clothes. This works because the ought, the normativity, is baked in at the interest. —An Argument of "Most-Rational Politics"— As all people have interests, and people’s interests may differ, the most rational situation for the people to create for themselves is a situation that is most consistent with the fulfillment of Inherent Interests overall, the upholding of at least the most intrinsic Oughts as priority. —Not all Interests are Equal— For an individual, you have the ability to change what interests you act according to. As such you should pick the one that's more rational overall, relative to your other interests, and relative to standards you rationally ought to accept based on things you already accept, such as transcendental arguments and other parts of Yoggist philosophy. Jumping into a sinkhole to get ice cream is an example of this, you might have an interest in jumping into a sinkhole in a very loose sense, but if you knew the result you probably wouldn't. In this sense, that interest is less intrinsic of an interest than your interest in ice cream, because it relies on external factors of knowledge among other factors for you to act according to it. This is fleshed out more in Inherent Interest Theory, explaining how justifying actions relative to interests leads to an action spectrum and actor/inactor distinctions for targeting conflict resolution, as well as how some interests act as a conduit for other interests and are more intrinsic than others.

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