Nov '24 • General discussion
Description of Moral Laws
These next three sections are simply a description of Eleutherianism, Hermanism, and Eleutherian Hermanism as positively constructed moral framework and laws. They aim to provide a shallow understanding of the phenomena of good and metaphysics that I seek to prove in the rest of the book.
Hermanism
The judge morality of Hermanism is what decides whether an action is good or not after the action. We take the process of intuitional judgment on whether something is a good, a consequentialism, and seed it with the definition of the good will to discover what is a good result. A seed is a value of morality. All seeds come from the good will. These seeds include justice, freedom, survival, fairness, and any moral value. We take the aim of the good will to do its duty to the subject, will, or abstract good and then Hermanism tells us whether the aim was accomplished. Take the seed of feeding your own child. We aim to feed our children to keep them alive and healthy. That is why we buy and prepare food for them. This is the result of the aim of the good will to feed our children as good itself and so they can do good. The act of feeding them is confirmed scientifically to be moral good as without food they would die. Poison would kill them. Rotting food would make them sick. Thus, feeding our children food that is nourishing is an action that satisfies the aim of the good will.
This can get very complicated when we impose higher order duties. A simple heuristic for the Hermanist calculus is essentially did this action result in a better world or not. If there are actors that have been harmed and actors that have benefited it seeks to weigh results while also providing cooperative activity that keeps harms from occurring due to 2nd order restrictions. A simple example of the Hermanist calculus is whether it was beneficial to spend money on food or rent. If you spend it on food you eat; if you spend it on rent you continue to have shelter. This example is a case of positional injustice. Both actions result in a better world for yourself but lead to some harm. There are three types of second order constrained actions: Both being permissible and a good result, one being bound by duty, and positional injustice. We see that if the second order construction of a space fails it results in a positional injustice where a bad result must occur no matter what. This is an example of how Hermanism judges social spaces. If you are thrust into a space that forces you to lead to negative results then it is moral to simply do as much good as you can. Here are some more examples of duty of the first order in the Hermanist calculus:
Kill your child as they lied to you about whether they brushed their teeth. We see that this is morally a terrible result for the child and is injustice. The Hermanist calculus takes all the good of your child and sees that the world is better off with them in it. The lie is still punished but murder in this case is immoral.
Forgive someone for hitting your car after they run a red light. This is a question of justice. Forgiveness is as just as moral under Hermanism. It is one of the options of justice. This is morally permissible as long as the person doesn’t pose a threat for other people. Justice from the good will could see the forgiveness as justice, but then force the driver to take driving classes or even take their driver’s license if they pose a threat to the lives of other people. Such as if they were drunk, high, or driving recklessly for fun.
Engage in taxation for the aim of educating children in the art of pottery. This is a morally permissible action depending on what the taxation results in for the taxed. If the people taxing can’t support themselves or their agents then the taxation is impermissible. If there is more than enough to go around then the taxation is permitted. Say every adult but you want to teach children pottery and you impose your will on the society through an authority to tax. This is seen as impermissible with a social organization that respects things such as democracy but with a republicanism, or social organization that lets you impose, this could be seen as permissible but bad politics. This leans to the fundamental problem of imposition versus respect of socially organized orders. Justice has long been imposed, for better or worse, on societies as mob justice is a problem with law and democracy. This allowance to impose, under the good will, is something that speaks to who and what system rules. The social orders of ELH can be numerous and with many interwoven parts.
Hermanism offers a glimpse into abuses of power for both the ruled subject and the ruler. In a trivial case of whether children should learn pottery this is often not important. In cases of minority rights, such as a genocide by the majority against the minority, this problem of how to impose and police those that impose is often paramount.
Here is an example of higher order duties in the H calculus. A grocery store in a food desert in a city in America. We see that the second order construction of the grocery store is dutiful but the third order imposition may fail it. All grocery stores must turn a profit to continue operating and the imposition of taxes and the market means that the grocery store must find some way to profit in order to continue operating. If the grocery store can’t keep costs down and prices affordable not many people will use it. How should the grocery store work with the construction of the third order in capitalism to survive? They should provide cheap staples such as rice, beans, peanut butter, jelly, lentils, and bread for the people in the food desert. Even pivoting from more expensive things to a dry goods store. They must meet the need of providing cheap, healthy food to people in this community that they can afford. Often, in America, the most convenient food is the food that is the most unhealthy. The grocery store should invest in convenient, and healthy food for the people in the food desert. If this fails, then the grocery store must cut costs to provide food. I aim for a third order that responds to the needs of the community so one imposition that I would change is food subsidies. The federal government in America pays us to eat meat and dairy. The food subsidies that could be used for cheap food to be even cheaper. If I had political power to change our food laws, I would pay for all staples to be even cheaper, even free. If a grocery store is paid to supply bread, beans, rice, flour, and sugar then we see that food deserts wouldn’t exist. Poverty is largely a failure of the third order not adapting to circumstances and failing to meet true need. In the case of America, systems of exchange and policy are often conflicted. When a construction of duty fails, it is the H calculus that provides us guidance into how it has failed. We must first know how something has failed to remedy it.
Eleutherianism
So what is Eleutherianism and how is it different from Kantian Deontology? I aim in this section to completely disregard Kant entirely and base Eleutherianism on what I take from Kant as a moral imposition. The justification for Eleutherianism metaphysically comes later in this book. This is just an overview of what Eleutherianism is as a positive construction.
The deontology of Eleutherianism is based on our knowledge of what is good from Hermanism and the metaphysics of the Invention of Good section. Here is Eleutherianism described as a moral law: The method scope critique allows us the formation of aim based duty assignment as all aims can be written as A Priori principles that the will acts on. With this in mind, we must disregard all of Kant’s metaphysics after the construction of the good will’s definition on which all good is based. It is only this which is definitionally perfect.
Eleutherianism is the construction of the assignment of duties with all knowable aims that the actor has when performing the action. It is a guide morality or a law that informs us what is moral before we perform the action. This duty based assignment of what is good is done through the aims based Eleutherian calculus. What is the best practice, most moral world, or duty that I am acting on? This happens with a deontology with the theory of good from Hermanism. The process of the EL calculus is essentially does this action result in a more moral world. This can get quite complex in circumstances but the process is demonstrated in these examples.
Should I cut down a tree? The EL calculus takes all duties into account. The duty to the world, the tree, and property vs the duty to yourself, your will, and what you aim to use the tree for. If there is no need to cut down the tree, or there is a less moral world if you cut down the tree, then it is not justified. If you aim to make the tree into paper, then we inspect to see if the tree is necessary for a more moral world. This paper would add utility but cutting down the tree would harm the ecology of the world. If the world is in desperate need of trees then we should use other forms of technology to maintain the tree in the world. This demonstrates the process by which EL adapts to moral circumstances to achieve a moral result. The EL calculus is what is used to create a heuristic based decision making process that is no means perfect but will allow for moral guidance. What our duties are comes from Hermanism.
The principal difference between Kant’s deontology and Eleutherianism is the adjudication between human ends. It seeks to determine which is moral, not from results, but from duties, rights, and justice. We see that when humanity is at conflict there is no guidance as to who the good will sides with Kantian deontology. This adjudication process is the essential problem with Kant’s deontology and what ELH seeks to solve. The conflict between a murderer and a victim is solved easily with ELH adjudicatory process. The heuristic that is used is the heuristic of rights. Should I allow a murderer to kill me? Kant’s only moral guidance is that both the murder of the murderer in self defense and the murder of yourself is immoral to allow. We are then forced into a non-violent solution that is often not practical. The adjudicatory process of EL is the process by which we determine if we are allowed to defend ourselves from murderers. We see that the duty to defend yourself is a real duty and for the crime of trying to murder under EL it is permissible to kill in self defense. The murder of someone is impermissible without good reason and even then it should be only used in extreme circumstances. EL defends the innocent from the assailant and allows murder in self defense WC.
Eleutherianism is a deontology, it seeks to inspect what our duties are. A famous aphorism of deontology asks whether we can use extreme means to accomplish our goals. Do the ends justify the means? EL looks to see what are good means to accomplish the aims of the good will. The act of eating meat results in a pleasurable result, your hunger satisfied, but is often immoral because of the means that is used for accomplishing that goal, the slaughter of animals. This is the means based calculus of deontology. If you can eat something else to satisfy your hunger that doesn’t involve cruelty then you must. If you believe that the only way to keep the world safe from crime is to slaughter all the people who benefit criminals, knowingly or unknowingly, you have failed the means based calculus of the good will. It is this means based calculus that allows for moral values to take hold from the original appeal of deontology. It is not the satisfaction of the result that makes something permissible but the satisfaction of both means and ends.
Eleutherian Hermanism
Using only Hermanism or Eleutherianism is problematic as both rely on the other. We need both to develop and perform morality. It is only the use of both that allows for a moral law without problems to be developed. Eleutherian Hermanism is both moral laws taken into account. We see that the moral guidance of both result in a system that is similar to virtue ethics in phenomena of good. EL seeks to be used before activity, H seeks to be used after activity, and ELH seeks to be a learning morality that advances both guide and judge morality to construct a moral agent and world. The iterative process of ELH is when we seek to determine what is the best practice for a certain action or of an imposition itself. It is the way how both laws refine each other and allow for advancement. ELH metaphysically is the knowledge of what is a good result from H and how to achieve a good result from EL. It is the learning of our duties, good, and how we achieve both.
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Description of Moral Laws
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