Maximizing Freedom is the Goal of Morality

I was having a discussion in the Coffee House when anastasia and I started discussing a topic I think deserves it's own thread. We stopped talking about whether or not bestiality is okay, and started discussing whether or not personal freedom was "the greatest goal" of morality.I propose that morality is nothing more than a code of conduct for interaction between humans. And therefore, it's goal should be to protect as much freedom for all individuals as possible.From: Message 164I agree that complete freedom is not possible. But it does not follow that freedom cannot be the greatest goal of morality. Maximizing freedom is the greatest goal of morality. Since everyone's desires are subjective, the most rational choice is to treat them with equal value. Therefore:Everyone should be treated equally with respect to their freedom to pursue happiness.
Basically, "let's play fair".If a man chooses to rape a woman, and I choose to stop that man. I agree that I am restricting that man's freedom. However, I am still keeping "maximizing freedom" at the top of my priority list because I am stopping the man from restricting the woman's freedom. There is no regression, and no circle. There is a box, however, and that box is agreeing to maximize freedoms and to respect people's different desire's equally.That is, the only time someone's freedom should be restricted, is if that person is already engaged in actions that are restricting other people's freedom's. Regardless of anyone's personal desires on the subject.Example 1:
I personally hate rape.
A man raping a woman has decided to restrict that woman's freedom.
The man is forcing the woman to have sex.
Therefore it is okay to stop that man and restrict his freedom to rape the woman.Example 2:
I personally hate racing stripes.
A man painting racing stripes down his car does not restrict anyone's freedom.
Therefore it is wrong to stop that man and restrict his freedom to paint racing stripes down his car.
Even though racing stripes are weird and funny-looking.I haven't proposed a new topic in a while, tips or corrections are welcome.I think this should go into Social Issues and Creation/Evolution forum? Although it doesn't really touch on Creation/Evolution... maybe Coffee House? Or maybe I even jumped the gun and missed a topic where this is already covered.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I'm coming at your question sideways, stile, so bear with me for a moment.From Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, p. 168: Evolution has endowed us with an innate moral sense, which we have expanded over the centuries through reason, knowledge and sympathy. Freedom isn't implicit in this innate morality, sympathy and empathy are. Tho, I think you're getting at the same point I am: Btw, rape and proscription of rape are, as near as ethnographers can tell, universal features of human nature too. (From Donald Brown's Human Universals)

Although I see where you are coming from, just by saying this you are making a moral pronouncement about a moral pronouncement, and thus, are running in to the same problem as before.In other words, you can't say that morals are really about freedom, and how they should not be limited, because you are using a moral principle in order to prove all such principles. That's redundant-- needlessly at that. You might as well have said, morals are moral.But, nonetheless, I see what angle you are coming from. And while I agree that freedom in most cases is a good thing, leaving it by itself without any clear references, leaves it open to manipulation.Obviously we are not free to do whatever we wish without consequences being attached with them. I'm not free to smash open someone's face at my whim, nor am I free to grope every attractive female that comes my way.There are parameters in life and those very parameters are directly dictated by our morals. So, you can't say that morals are about freedom, but rather, freedom is predicated on the notion of morals-- not the other way around.

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"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt

Like many people in Taiwan, I'm sympathetic to the idea of individual freedom as a goal for society.But I wonder if you aren't off to a bad start here. You don't say individual freedom should be a goal of society. You say it should be a goal of morality.But on what basis can you declare what morality itself 'should' do? The word implies that you are already using a system of moral belief as your frame of reference.___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Yes, precisely...

I saw after I posted, NJ, that you raised the same question.The excerpt shared by molbiogirl stands on firmer ground. Quite aside from the fact that the observation is plausible and thought-provoking, it reads like a genuine observation. The observer is interested in how morality works. The observer doesn't sabotage the effort by going off on how morality 'ought' to work.That would have made a strong OP. I'd be interested in any further reading she wants to recommend.
___Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Why thank you, Arch.I've just begun pokin' my nose in EP. But I tell you what. This sounds irresistable: Human Evolution, Reproduction, and Morality
Lewis F. Petrinovich, 1998.I'm gonna hit the library tomorrow and dig right in.

if , and i belive its a bigish IF , you can strip out of morlity all the historic , cultrual and religious and political bagage that it carries .. then yes at a basic level moral is about "lets play fair" ,but rather that its goal being personal freedom .. to me it seems to be more about personal responcablity , and how one must agree to limit ones personal freedom so as to accomadate the rest of the world .morality is our constuct on how to interact with each other in such away to avoid unsetting other people , and to work with in agreed boundiers.it also provides shorthand signals to others of our intent to be a good neighbour .....

Ik, I strongly suggest you take a long, hard look at The Blank Slate. The evidence that supports The First Law of behavioral genetics is mind boggling.It's no longer a question of nature v. nurture.Nature won. Hands down. Question is by how much.

Yes, I was worried about exactly this when I was putting the OP together. The gist is grounded... somewhere... I may have simply grounded it in the wrong place. However, I'm not fully convinced. I'll have a better post to reply to you and Archer Opterix in a while, things just got busy at work Hopefully I can re-word whatever I'm trying to say. Maybe I just mean exactly what you and Archer are saying, but I'm not even sure I'm clear on what I want to say yet. Which is why I'm going to enjoy this thread, it's going to be impossible for me to not learn something

i am aware of , but i admit only as a layman , of behavioral genetics , but how do you think this effects my statements ?
The origin of a moral code , the origin of the content of that code are differnet matters , how we deal with our traits and insticnts is this matter .. you can not be claiming we have no power over our insticts ? ?it is reconising them and dealing with them that makes us what we really are ....beyond the reasons why whe have a moral code , its is what we do with the code that defines us , as much as any of our traits and instincts , all are part of the whole that is I .personal i belive its nature ,nuture and personal sheer bloody mindedness that make each person what they are , the amounts vary , some being more affected by one aspect than the others ....the ability to , and the oppertunity to selfassess further shapes us as we learn to understand how each aspect .you might what to look at the tread on moral relativisum and see how that lays with the idea of morals with a behavioral genetics origin ...

I propose that if morality is nothing more than a code of conduct for interaction amoung humans, it's goal can be anything. That probably sounds weird, but you are definitely missing something: namely, how you decide which items should be figured into this code.You do that by deciding which things are good for humans. And guess what? Your ideas are not the same as mine are not the same as our neighbors'. You may decide that some amount of freedom is desirable across the whole range of human experience. You still have to figure out 'how much freedom', and 'which freedoms'.If you look at our laws, you see two freedoms: freedom to pursue happiness, and liberty. One is bodily liberty, which is a RIGHT unless in war time, and while the pursuit of happiness is a right, it is not an absolute right. We do not have the right to pursue any old kind of happiness. It it meant to be 'morally grounded' happiness' This brings us back to deciding what is moral, and you can't, again, use 'freedom' as the qualifier. Still a big cicle.

Ik, FYI, Firefox has a great spellchecker built in.Your contention that ... ... is incorrect.Let's start over. Your original post sounds like the Blank Slate version of nature v. nurture.Let's hear what Steve has to say about the Blank Slate: Your statement that ... ... presupposes that history, culture and politics are piled on a Blank Slate. You're a nurture boy.I, in a rather facile manner, I will admit, simply declared that the battle has been won, that nature determines, to a large extent, universal, heritable behavioral traits. With me so far?And while I would agree that some heritable behavioral traits do not "contain the content", e.g. "right-handedness as population norm", many most certainly do, e.g. "prestige inequalities", "sexual modesty", "copulation normally conducted in privacy", "redress of wrongs", "resistance to abuse of power, to dominance", etc.http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/universals.htmlMorality is "the various ways those faculties could have evolved".

FYI i know but im at work and we cant customise ,im stuck with basic IE ,i think we crossed wires my meaning was ...The origin of a moral code and the origin of the content of that code , are a different question to how we make use of the code ,assuming we are reasoning creatures ...the code may well be a product of genetics ,and i am ok with your evidence for nature over nurture ..
but my point is those only give us the code , what we do with it once we have it is what make us humans .. we can see what the code really means in the real world of today and can realise our own predilictions and try to work beyond them ..it goes ...i think therfore i am , now why to i think that way , what other ways to think are there , and how can i find the value of these ways ?as to presupposing history, culture and politics are piled on a Blank Slate .. well they are , its a question of what effect they have ,how much effect, what effect we allow them to have , and how we reconise those effects ..if ,as you belive ,we are that tied to nature that much you end up with problems of etremmes.. is there a gene set for amoral action ??further you are approaching the area of moral absolutes , that opens another can of worms .I am not a nurture boy , neither am i a nature one , i belive.. i really hope we can realise and move beyond such limits ....to be really blunt the origins of the moral code the contents of the code are irrelavent .. what matters is the code of any value , and how do you determine that ,in a reasoned way ,what use it should be put to ...why be moral if it is merely a genetic disposition ... people colour hair why not change our morals ......
to reduce morality to which gene set you pick up gives it as much value as eye colour .Stiles OP asks a really important question .. what is the goal of morality is it Freedom ... to say morality is inbuild by our
genes and we cannot resaon beyond that is a major limit to any idea of freedom Edited by ikabod, : rewording