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 “free will” that is coherent and non-mystical. 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 it's 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 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.

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 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, is sustained.

 

 

--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.