The Libertarian-Transhumanist Philosophical Platform

Herein is given a summary of my entire current world-view. This is intended to be a work in progress which I will update over time. I name this world-view 'Libertarian-Transhumanism'.

Copyright Marc Geddes

First version created: 06 Aug, 2004

This version created: 12 Aug, 2004

This is version no: 3

CONTENTS

Introduction

*Metaphysics*

Universal Computation - The Mapping of Mathematics, Mind and Matter

The Tegmark Model and Many Worlds- Infinite Reality

Objective Reality and the Beginning of Time

The Arrow of Time and Evolution

*Epistemology*

Reason and Objective Truth

The Logical Positivist Fallacy

The Scientific method - Popper, Bartley and Bayes.

The Empirical Method and the Anthropic Principle

Levels of Organization and Complexity Theory

*Ethics*

The Equivalence of Mind and Morality: How Volitional Consciousness Creates Values

The Moral Relativist Fallacy

Egoism versus Altruism. Rights and Values.

Perfectionist Ethics

Immortalist Ethics

Epicurean Ethics

Extrapolated Volition and Collective Volition - Yudkowsky

*Politics*

The Nature of Rights: Person-hood Ethics

The Sole Political Right: Liberty

Minimal Government - Consequentalism and Minarchist Libertarianism

Democracy - Accountability and Transparency

Capitalism: Economic Alchemy

INTRODUCTION

Herein is given a summary of my entire current world-view. This is intended to be a work in progress which I will update over time. I name this world-view 'Libertarian-Transhumanism'.

Libertarianism is a political philosophy which takes liberty as the sole political right and the securing of liberty to be the only valid function of government. Transhumanism is a cultural philosophy which views reality in scientific rationalist terms but combines this with the desire for radical transcendence. It advocates using science, technology and critical thinking to strive for self-perfection by greatly enhancing human mental and physical characteristics to explore post-human realms of existence. The combination of the two memes (ideas) is emerging as a comprehensive new philosophy of life.

I am attempting to make this philosophy explicit through rational justification of the premises underlying this world-view. What follows is the summary of my conclusions as I move logically from metaphysics (the philosophy of the fundamental properties of existence), through epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), ethics (moral philosophy) and politics (political philosophy). Many of the ideas and principles were postulated and developed by a great number of brilliant thinkers. Yet I like to think I made some small contributions here and there. And since I am interested in what is true, it likely that some of my conclusions will be modified and expanded over time as I learn more from various thinkers.

Not everyone calling themselves Libertarians or Transhumanists would agree with all of my conclusions. But the framework is in my opinion tightly interconnected, forming a dazzling self-consistent whole. I do not believe that parts of it can be chopped and changed arbitrarily without serious contradictions. For instance I do not think that Transhumanism can be separated from Libertarianism or visa versa. Both provide the natural logical support for the other.

The memetic framework here described is but a beginning, but it is a beginning which stands upon the solid foundations of the greatest human thinkers. Future discoveries, creations and cultures will be extraordinary in some ways that are beyond my human imaging. Yet all will be built on the fundamental principles of reality that were first fully grasped and unified into a single coherent world-view at the beginning of 21st century Earth. It is a good beginning.

METAPHYSICS

Universal Computation - The Mapping of Mathematics, Mind and Matter

There appear to be three fundamental categories by which by interpret existence.  The three fundamental realms of existence are the mathematical, the physical and the mental.  The language of science is the language of mathematics.  Mathematics is how scientists describe the physical world.  One of the most extraordinary historical facts is the unexpected usefulness of highly abstract mathematical concepts for the physical sciences.  A famous example of this is work of the mathematician Riemann in exploring 4-dimensional geometries.  This turned out to be exactly what Einstein needed to describe the structure of space-time decades later. 

Then it transpired that there was a mapping between mathematical and computational concepts (mathematics and computation turned out to be equivalent).  Alan Turing, along with Alonzo Church proposed the Church-Turing theses, that all mathematical-logical operations can be fully captured by a general purpose computer. 

But since the entire physical world is described by mathematical equations, Turing’s conception of a ‘Universal Turing Machine’ (the general purpose computer) suggests that all of reality is entirely computational, in the sense that any finite part of reality can be simulated by a general purpose computer.  The power of computation has been explored in depth by Stephen Wolfram, who showed how extremely complex phenomena can emerge from very simple computational rules, in the form of what are called ‘Cellular Automaton’.

It’s true that mathematics there do exist so-called ‘Un Computable’ entities, but this simply refers to the fact that such entities have infinite complexity.  Any particular finite portion of such an entity is still entirely computational.  Whilst ‘all’ of reality in the sense of a unified totality of everything that exists is uncomputable, ‘all’ in the sense of each and every finite portion of reality considered separately is computable.  So there is no reason for believing that any finite aspect of reality is uncomputable.

If physical things are equivalent to mathematics/computations then brains are too.  The human brain is, as far as is known, an entirely natural object operating according to known natural laws.  It follows that all mental processes must be computational and mathematical.  Human brains are computers and minds too are entirely computational processes.  It also follows that artificial intelligences with consciousness should be possible.

A complete equivalence between mathematics, physical reality and mental reality can be postulated.  None of these categories are more fundamental than the others.  Mathematical, physical and mental realities are inseparable.  Understanding reality means understanding the connections between the three realms, or how concepts in each realm map to concepts in the others.

The Tegmark Model and Many Worlds:  Infinite Reality

If the mathematical, mental and physical realms are equivalent as the evidence suggests, some extraordinary conclusions follow.  Mathematical structures have objective reality in the sense that they are not human creations.  Everything that can logically exist in mathematical reality would concretely exist somewhere.  This is a form of mathematical Platonism.  The realm of mathematical things does not exist in world of forms separate from physical reality.  It is instead being proposed that the mathematical world is the physical world.  Because there are in mathematics entities with infinite complexity (uncomputable entities), it follows that reality itself is infinite.

Reality can be considered to be an infinitely complex ‘Multiverse’ consisting of all logically possible space-time systems.  Humans are directly aware of only one particular space-time system.  Physicist Max Tegmark has developed a detailed model of this conception of reality.

The Many-World Interpretation of Quantum mechanics provides strong theoretical and experimental support for the Tegmark model.  First proposed by Hugh Everett, the idea was a way of interpreting the probabilistic equations of quantum physics, which appeared to describe multiple possible states for physical systems mysteriously co-existing with each other.  For each possible quantum state Everett suggested that there exists an ‘alternative universe’ corresponding to that state.  For instance there exist multiple copies of readers in alternative time-tracks in which different things happened to them corresponding to different choices they made during their lives.  There exist universes in which Adolph Hitler won World War II, and so on.  Physicist

David Deutsch has explored and developed the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum mechanics in depth.

Objective Reality and the Beginning of Time

According to the Big Bang theory, our entire observable universe had a beginning 13 billion years ago in a gigantic explosion.  The entire observable universe was once compressed to a practically infinitesimal point, and has been expanding outwards ever since.  But what created the universe?

If the mathematical, physical and mental realms are equivalent, there can be no super natural forces at work in reality.  Everything in reality must have logical, scientific explanations.  A mind cannot create reality.  Reality is always greater than any finite conscious observer.

Reality is by definition everything that exists.  So nothing can exist outside reality to create it.  The very word ‘create’ implies an event taking place in time.  But time itself is a part of reality.  Hence nothing can create time.  The conclusion is that reality cannot be created.  So the question ‘What created reality?’ is meaningless.

If the big bang really is the beginning of time, there was nothing before this time.  So asking what came before is simply a meaningless question, comparable to asking what point exists 5 miles north of the North Pole.

According to the Tegmark picture everything that logically can exist does exist somewhere.  Mathematics is the fabric of existence itself.  Since it was possible for humans to exist, it’s no surprise that do we exist.  We are simply embedded somewhere in the mathematics of all possible space-time systems.

The Arrow of Time and Evolution

From the vantage point of a totally objective conception of reality, reality is eternal.  Past, present and future co-exist together in an eternal Platonic form of infinite complexity, representing all possible space-time systems.  From the vantage point of the conscious experience of rational observers however, time appears to be very real.  The perceptual awareness of human beings is correlated to very particular informational patterns in the multiverse.  This correlation is equivalent to the sense of time flow.

This particular space-time portion of the multiverse which we think of as ‘the history of the universe’ has a certain logical structure to it.  We perceive a ‘beginning’ to time at the big bang 13 billion years ago.  This is correlated with a highly ordered and simple physical state.  The fundamental property to describe this is something called entropy, a measure of the randomness of a physical system.  At the beginning of time, the entropy density is as low as is physically possible. 

As time advances, entropy density increases.  The system is becoming less ordered overall.  The increase in entropy is correlated to an ever increasing range of possible states which the universe could be in - these are ‘quantum branchings’.  All possibilities must be concretely realized in alternative universes.  So the structure moves from the simple to the complex.  The structure is similar to a tree continuously branching out.  There are an ever increasing number of alternative universes.  It seems reasonable to postulate that entropy, quantum branching and time are equivalent.  Entropy and quantum states define what time is.  They are time itself.  Our consciousness is simply correlated with this structure so that we perceive less complexity as being ‘in the past’.

These ideas pertaining to the arrow of time, entropy and quantum mechanics are in part my own.  But Julian Barbour in particular is one scientist who is exploring the connection between the quantum multiverse and time in depth.

The important points to understand are that time had a beginning and there are global properties of physical reality which define an arrow of time.  The physical world evolves, becoming ever more complex over time.  More complicated structures are built up from simpler ones.  Time is linear.  The future must always be different to, and more complex than, the past.

EPISTEMOLOGY

Reason and Objective Truth

Reason is the only way to assess the truth content of one’s beliefs and reason can grasp all truths.  By reason is meant both empirical observation and abstract argument.  There are no supernatural forces.  No divine revelations and no psychic powers.  Only reason can establish truth.  This is not to say that reason is everything, or that we should try to be rational all the time, like Spock in Star Trek.  Other aspects of mental life such as emotions certainly have their place.  It is simply the case that when it comes to assessing the truth of some matter, we might rely solely on reason.

There are definite answers to many kinds of questions that are the same for all rational observers.  These answers are normative, which means that the beliefs of all rational observers tend to converge the longer they think about matters.  Such convergent beliefs are what is called ‘Objective Truth’, in the sense that they are observer independent.  Objective truth is independent of the wishes, emotions and hopes of observers.  Objective truth just is, and we have to like it or lump it.  Of course human failure to reach agreement about a certain matter is not necessarily an indication that there is no objective fact-of-the-matter, since many humans are not particularly rational!  A ‘rational observer’ means one who rigorously applies the scientific method as described below.

Objective Truths can be fully grasped by rational minds.  That is, there is no unbridgeable separation between a thing *in itself* and a mental model of that thing.  Perfect models of any finite part of reality are possible (of course whether we can be absolutely certain that we have a perfect model of something is another matter entirely; as is postulated in the next section, we cannot achieve such certainty).  There is no fundamental distinction between different kinds of objective truths.  For instance knowledge about mathematics is the same *kind* of knowledge as knowledge about physical objects.  As another example, a mental experience of the color blue (‘blue qualia’) is identical to a logical description of all the brain processes pertaining to that experience.  These facts all follow from the metaphysics of Universal computation and the three-way mapping between mathematical/computational reality, mental reality and physical reality.

The Logical Positivist Fallacy

Skeptics about the efficacy of the scientific method think that the role of reason is simply to describe or predict directly perceivable things, and abstract concepts are merely ‘devices’ invented by humans for this purpose.  They regard abstract concepts as models which don’t represent anything real.  This is a philosophical position known as positivism (also ‘non-realist’).

But the role of reason is not merely to describe or predict things, it is to explain reality.  The nature of reality is what we are trying to find out.  One cannot presuppose in advance which things should qualify as being part of ‘observable reality’ and which are mere ‘mental devices’.  Reality is infinite.  A rational observer will only have a partial understanding of it at any given time.  The very foundation-head of scientific thought is the idea that there are things in reality beyond what we currently understand.  The role of reason is to broaden our understanding of what constitutes reality by attempting to extrapolate beyond our direct observations to parts of reality that are currently hidden to us.  Positivists who refuse to grant that there are as yet unobservable things that exist ‘out there’ that we are capable of understanding none the less have prevented themselves from ever finding these things!  This is comparable to a cave man watching shadows on the wall who thinks that the shadows are reality and thus doesn’t bother turning his head to find the source.

The Scientific Method - Popper, Bartley and Bayes.

The scientific method was first described in detail by philosopher Karl Popper.  Popper’s ideas were further extended by Bartley, resulting in a more general framework encompassing all of rational thought. This framework is known as ‘Pan-Critical Rationalism’.  Its essential feature it that can be turned on itself.  No unvalidated starting premises are needed.  Reason can validate itself.  And the methods of reason can be used to critique and improve the methods of reasoning themselves.

Beliefs about objective truth are always hypotheses, or conjectures.  There are no certainties or axioms that we can accept without question.  Although objective truth does exist and we can accurately know it, we cannot know it with certainty.  We must always hold beliefs with varying degrees of certainty less than 100%.  All beliefs must always be open to question. 

Beliefs form an organic, open-ended network, with none as privileged ‘starting points’.  All the beliefs in a reasoning network can draw their support from other beliefs in the network, thus avoiding any infinite regress or unvalidated premises.  Conclusions are drawn through the formulation of multiple hypotheses to explain problems and the testing of these competing hypotheses through repeated rational criticism and/or experiments.  The merits of hypotheses are judged relative to each other.  The hypothesis which appears to best explain the problem it was addressing must be taken as corresponding to reality until proven otherwise.

All reasoning is an approximation to a mathematical ideal described by the probability formula known as Bayes Theorem.  Bayes Theorem establishes precisely how probabilities are updated on the basis of new information.  Bayesians postulate that all beliefs can be assigned Bayesian probabilities which represent the degree of certainty that the given beliefs are true.  The probabilities assigned to hypotheses about objective truths are by definition normative.  This means that such probabilities would converge for all rational observers given increasing amounts of relevant information.

The Empirical Method and the Anthropic Principle

As explained in the ‘Metaphysics’ section, the conscious awareness of a rational observer is partitioned into largely separate space-time systems.  The Tegmark model describes many versions of such systems, each being observed by alternative versions of the ‘same’ rational observer.  A particular conscious version of a rational observer does not know which part of the multiverse he is observing.  Therefore abstract thought will be insufficient to grasp the nature of his reality.  Direct observations will be required to determine which particular space-time system his consciousness inhabits.  In plain English: there are many possible universes.  Sitting around doing philosophy in bath-tubs won’t tell us which one we are in.  We need to go out into the world and observe it, and perform experiments upon it to try to locate our position in the multiverse.  The empirical method is a vital part of the reasoning process.

Yet the very existence of a rational observer and the very nature through which that observer looks at the world will limit the range of possible things that an observer could see.  A simple example of this is a fisher-man using a net with large spaces in it.  Only large fish will be caught.  So knowledge about our own nature can be used to provide clues about our own location in the multiverse.  This is called the observer-selection-effect, also known as ‘The Anthropic Principle’.  Not all possible observers can exist in all space-time systems.  For instance some systems would be too chaotic for life to have evolved at all.  By our very existence as rational observers we know that we cannot have evolved in one those chaotic systems.  Observer-selection effects have been explored in depth by Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom.

Levels of Organization and Complexity Theory

The portions of reality that we can comprehend appear to have the fundamental property that more complex structures are built from simpler ones.  Because of the connections between mathematics, matter and mind, this principle applies in all three realms.  More complex physical structures are built from simpler physical structures.  Similarly more complex ideas emerge from simpler ones.  Reality has multiple levels of organization.  Although in principle higher levels of organization are entirely reducible to descriptions in terms of the lower more fundamental level, new emergent properties appear at each new level, requiring new methods of reasoning and concepts to understand.  The purpose of reason is to broaden our understanding of reason itself and of what constitutes reality, not just to describe things.

Complexity theory seeks for general principles that may be applicable at many different levels of organization.  Different levels of organization have general similarities to each other.  So there are self-similarity properties woven to the fabric of reality.  Notables such as physicist Murray Gell-Mann and scientist Stuart Kauffman have explored this field.

ETHICS

The Equivalence of Mind and Morality: How Volitional Consciousness Creates Values

Good and Evil are categories of value judgment about various things.  Value judgments imply ideals, or goals towards which moral agents aim to strive.  This in turns requires consciousness and the experience of conscious choice, which exist in minds.  Since there are no supernatural minds in existence in reality, good and evil must be generated by the minds of ordinary mortal beings, like humans.  So Good and Evil are not objective properties of reality in the same way that mathematical or physical facts are, since they are in part created by the choices that humans make.  But the choices that people make will be heavily influenced by human nature itself.  Minds require brains shaped by our biological heritage.  Evolutionary psychology studies how human morals stem from the forces of biological evolution.  People’s choices will also be influenced by the social environment.  The theory of memes is concerned with the spread of cultural ideas.

But exactly what is the nature of choice?  Philosopher Ayn Rand proposed that free will is a function of the capacity to think rationally.  In other words, one can expand ones volitional consciousness (free will) to the extent that one can think rationally.  Developing this idea, I propose that in this context rational thinking makes the ability to imagine a number of different possible choices and to rationally calculate the consequences of each.  It is the sense of time, or ability to project one’s imagination into the future, combined with the creative and rational faculties to imagine new possibilities and to understand the consequences of each that generates morality.  The very essence of morality is rational choice.  This is a form of existentialist philosophy, the idea that we are in the process of changing our very essence by the choices we make.

The Moral Relativist Fallacy

The fact that morality is generated by minds does not mean that morality is wholly arbitrary.  Moral relativists will try to claim all morality is relative to some particular cultural group or even individual people.  All moralities are equal they say.  A few people take this to the extreme and say that morality is entirely relative to individuals.  This is radical moral skepticism.

But morality is not wholly relative.  As explained, the nature of a mind will be heavily influenced by its physical substrate.  In humans that is our biological evolutionary heritage.  Another point to note that there is no such thing as a group mind.  So human wants and needs reside in individual minds, which exist quite independently of social institutions such as government.

There should exist general characteristics that virtually all rational beings (like humans) have in common, emerging from their basic natures.  These universals can form the basis for universal standards of moral judgment, standards that all rational beings can agree to.  We can call these moral universals.  Three universal moral principles will be suggested in the next two sections.  Within the framework of a few general universal principles, a broad diversity of positive moralities would be possible.  But they would be judged by the established universal standards. 

Egoism versus Altruism.  Rights and Values.

When considering interpersonal conduct, it is important to draw a sharp distinction between Rights and Values.  Rights are our obligations to other moral agents.  Values suggest personal goals we can chose to pursue.  Just because moral agents have values, this certainly doesn’t necessarily give them the right to impose these values upon others!  As a general rule of thumb, Rights are a guide to what we shouldn’t do.  Values are more positive in that they suggest what we should do.  The theory of Rights will be explained in the sections on ‘Politics’.  The following sections discuss Values.  The suggested ethical principles in these sections are only intended as guides to individual personal conduct, not legal principles.

Is it better to act in one’s own rational self-interest or for the benefit of others with no expectation of personal gain?  Egoist theories of morality propose that a person’s actions are not moral unless they always produce some benefit for that person.  Altruists say the opposite: a person must act selflessly for the benefit of others in order to be moral.  Neither egoism nor altruism is a good guide to moral behavior.  Altruism fails to take into properly take into account the moral values of the Self (Moral Agent), Egoism fails to properly take into account the moral rights of others.  A viable moral theory must take into consideration the moral values and rights of all moral agents.

The approach known as Utilitarianism is the right one.  Here the moral values and rights of all moral agents are taken into account.  The idea is that we should act in such a way as to maximize the overall satisfaction of the wants and needs of all agents potentially interacting with each other in some group.  A mixture of altruism and egoism will be needed.  On the average agents will benefit from following this morality, but sometimes they will need to make some degree of sacrifice for others.  In practice what is happening is trade-offs between different values.  In the sections that follow the proposed moral universals are meant to be applied in a Utilitarian sense: we should be looking to maximize the overall value in a society as a whole.

Perfectionist Ethics

There is no reason for thinking that humans are the end of the evolutionary process.  On the contrary it is likely that they were merely the beginning.  It is possible for beings to exist with cognitive and physical abilities as far beyond those of humans as humans abilities are beyond those of slugs.  Since values are generated by our capacity for imagination and rational thinking, we could enhance meaning and value by enhancing our innate abilities.  The Universal principle here is self-improvement. 

It is a mistake to assume that what is natural is necessarily good.  Aids, small-pox and cancer were all natural.  Humans should regard reality as a work of art in progress and aim to perfect themselves, utilizing science, technology and critical thinking to deliberately enhance human mental and physical characteristics towards this end. 

Humans should seek to transcend to Post-human states.  This does not mean a total alteration of human nature.  Instead it means seeking to enable the positive aspects of human nature to better flourish, whilst countering the negative.

Transhumanist Max More was the first to develop these ideas in a comprehensive way, through his Extropian philosophy.  The heroic idea of the super-man ‘over-coming’ through acts of will is strongly echoed in the much earlier philosophy of Nietzsche, who also used the metaphor of life as a work of art in progress.

Immortalist Ethics

Minds generate values.  But minds cannot continue to do this if minds cease to exist.  The longer the possible future before us, the greater the range of choices open us, and hence the more potential meaning and value.  Long lives give us the potential to learn more and encourage longer-range thinking, things that will tend to make us more moral.  It’s clear that the meaning of a person’s life does in part depend on its length.  This can be taken as the grounding for a Universal ethics. 

Humans should aim to take those actions which enhance their own survival prospects and avoid those actions which degrade their own survival prospects.  The derived moral imperative is that humans should strive to lengthen their life spans by making rational life-affirming choices and pursuing radical life extension technologies.  It’s possible that the risk of death can never be reduced to zero, but can be continuously reduced over an indefinite time frame through a never ending application of ever greater ingenuity and technology.  Thus immortality in the sense of indestructibility would be impossible, but immortality in the sense of indefinite life span would be possible. 

The idea of attempting to ground a universal ethics in an affirmation of life has been used by such notables as philosopher Ayn Rand (although in an egoist sense, versus a Utilitarian sense here) and German philosopher Albert Schweitzer.  I myself first developed the ideas summarized here in an essay published in the book ‘The Scientific Conquest Of Death’ (’An Introduction to Immortalist Morality’)

Epicurean Ethics

Immortalist ethics and perfectionist ethics suggest general universal goals for rational beings to pursue, providing a standard for judging positive and negative choices.  Yet clearly a huge (in fact an infinite!) diversity of sub-goals is consistent with these broader goals.  Since all such sub-goals are by definition good, it would be a tragedy not to explore as many of them as possible.  All of us are unique.  To learn something new is to interact with it in a unique way, and hence convey new meaning and value upon it. 

Given these points, more universal principles present themselves:  to value diversity, complexity and novelty for their own sakes.  In fact humans are hard-wired to experience a certain amount of pleasure in such things.  An Epicurean Imperative expands our horizons greatly.  New knowledge, new art, new food, new places, new people, all greatly enhance avenues for positive experiences.  Hand in hand with learning and understands comes the value of tolerance.  Because such a diverse range of positive values are possible, we must respect view-points other than our own.

Extrapolated Volition and Collective Volition:  Yudkowsky

We can combine all the ideas in this section to obtain an understanding of what morality is.  What a person currently values is not necessarily what is moral.  As explained, the ability to create and act upon one’s values is limited by the capacity for creative and rational thinking relevant to imagining and calculating future outcomes.  The general nature of rational beings with volitional consciousness (like humans) establishes moral universals.  The very process of seeking values creates values. 

If we lived long enough to think deeply (a requirement leading to Immortalist ethics), acquired lots of interesting life experience and knowledge (a requirement leading to Epicurean ethics) and were smarter and more imaginative (a requirement leading to Perfectionist ethics) we would better be able to make creative and rational choices.  This defines a sort of ‘arrow of morality’ moving into the future. 

Again, Existentialist philosophy is useful here.  The current meaning of our lives depends on the person we should aim to become: our wiser, future selves.  A wiser possible future version of ourselves represents our ‘Extrapolated Volition’.  In accordance with Utilitarianism, this idea has to be applied on a social level, as well as an individual level.  Then we obtain an arrow of morality for society as a whole, the ‘Collective Volition’.  The concepts of ‘Extrapolated Volition’ and ‘Collective Volition’ were first developed and explored in depth by artificial intelligence scientist Eliezer Yudkowsky.  Extrapolating Volition further and further into the future defines increasing goodness.  To seek values is to create values and the created values further the seeking.  That’s what morality is.

POLITICS

The Nature of Rights:  Person-hood Ethics

Morality stems from conscious minds.  Therefore all entities with conscious minds are moral agents with some degree of rights.  Where no mind is present, no person exists.  Where some sort of mind exists, some kind of person exists.  All entities with person-hood status have some kind of rights.  There are varying degrees of rights, stemming solely from the degree of Person-hood present. 

The degree of Person-hood is determined solely by the mental capacities (cognitive abilities) of the entity in question.  A person’s cognitive abilities are the totality of their capacity for spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical conscious experience.  Person-hood has nothing to do with a person’s body or social station.  Sex and race for instance, are irrelevant.  The group a person belongs to is irrelevant.  There are no group minds.  Person-hood depends on one’s capacities as an individual.  Person-hood has nothing to do with the biological or physical substrate within which a mind is embodied.  Animals and other possible non-human entities such as artificial intelligences are people to the degree to which cognitive abilities are present.  It follows that entities such as animals do have some degree of rights.  All people with equal cognitive abilities have equal rights.  American bio-ethicist and Transhumanist James Hughes is one notable person exploring the concept of Person-hood ethics.

The Sole Political Right: Liberty

The suggested major moral universals were the Perfectionist, Immortalist and Epicurean ethics: respect for self-improvement, respect for life, respect for diversity and novelty.  The range of possible sub-values consistent with this is enormous.  It cannot then, be the role of the law to impose specific sets of values upon people.  This would run totally contrary to the nature of morality as explained in the Ethics sections and in the preceding section here.  Values can only be created through acts of individual free will.  They cannot be externally imposed. 

The role of the law then should be secure and enforce rights, not to impose values on people.  Rights are largely negative in nature: Rights are liberties, not entitlements.  Therefore the only valid function of the government is to maximize liberty.  As a general rule, liberty is the freedom of individuals to utilize the resources they own (Property Rights), including the right to use their own minds and bodies as they see fit (Self-Ownership).  So the main role of the government should be to secure property rights, by protecting individuals against force and fraud.  This translates to a high level of free market capitalism with a high level of civil liberties, a political position known as Libertarianism (also known as ‘Classical Liberalism’). 

The classical liberal tradition has a long philosophical history.  Notable theorists who contributed to its development include philosophers John Locke, John Mill, Adam Smith and Robert Nozick and economists Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman.

Minimal Government: Consequentialism and Minarchist Libertarianism

In accordance with Utilitarianism, individual freedoms are not an absolute; they would be a secondary consequence of maximizing the overall freedom of choice in society.  So maximization of freedom does not imply a total absence of coercion.  Government should create laws which act to maximize overall freedom of choice, which will sometimes require limitations to be placed on individuals.

Good government is an essential part of a free society.  The government has an essential role to play in defining and enforcing property rights, resolving disputes and enabling social co-ordination on a large scale.  Exactly what the scope of government will need to be to maximize liberty should be determined by empirical data, not ideology.  Almost certainly the government will need to run police, defense and courts, but it may possibly also need to handle some kinds of civil and physical infrastructure.  Government regulations will probably be mainly confined to defining and enforcing property rights, but laws to secure IP (such as patents and copyrights) and eminent domain may possibly also be needed.  This is a form of Minarchist Libertarianism (Minimal government).

Defining a successful political system by its overall practical consequences rather than by fixed dogma is called the Consequentialist approach.  A modern proponent of this approach who has explored Minarchist Libertarian in depth is Epstein.

Democracy - Accountability and Transparency

Authoritarian forms of government are incompatible with liberty.  In order to guarantee that the government is working fairly to maximize overall liberty (which requires that everyone be taken into account) all citizens must have the right to have a say in the laws passed by the government, including the right to choose their leaders.  No one has a right to rule others unless they are granted such rights by the will of all the citizens in a society.  In addition, all citizens must have the right to be kept informed about all the activities going on society which may directly or indirect affect them, especially the activities of those in government.  It was Thomas Jefferson, founding father of the United States who once stated that: ‘Information is the currency of Democracy’.  The required two conditions are: Accountability - government should be by the people, for the people and of the people and (b) Transparency - the workings of government must be open to observation for all people.

Simple majority rules government is not compatible with liberty.  This can lead to ‘mob rule’, where majorities tyrannize minorities.  It is incompatible with the notion of individual rights, which, as explained in the earlier section are basically property rights - individuals have the right to control the resources they own, including their own minds and bodies.  These rights are created by the nature of individual minds, not the government.  The proper role of the government is to secure rights.  It does not create them.  Nor should individual choices be subject to the arbitrary whims of the majority.  Democracy should be a system of Accountability and Transparency, not a method of decision making.  Writer David Brin has investigated in depth the sort of transparent society that might be needed to deepen democracy.

Virtually all decisions in free societies could be left to the free market.  Futures markets and Policy Analysis markets (PAM’s) are essentially free markets in ‘ideas’ which can be used to make decisions and predict events on the social level.  Transhumanist and economist Robin Hanson has explored this approach in depth.

The best form of democracy then, is not direct majority rules, but representative democracy with some kind of Constitution or Bill of Rights.  It is best that citizens delegate government decisions to knowledgeable representatives to act on their behalf.  The Constitution should describe the proper functions of the government and its limits.  Property rights and civil liberties should be defined.  The role of the government should be mainly confined to interpreting the Constitution.  Only an overwhelming majority should be a mandate to amend or alter the Constitution.

Capitalism: Economic Alchemy

A resource is not a resource until someone has figured out how to use it.  The value of something is not a function of physical qualities and quantities such volume of production or hours worked.  These were the economic fallacies of Marxism.  The value of something actually resides in its utility, or it’s usefulness to other human beings.  So resources are created by human rationality and creativity.  When person figures out a way to take something which is less useful to humans and make it more useful, he has ‘added value’ and actually created wealth.  For instance Oil was simply worthless ‘black goo’ until a use of it was found as a means of energy production for transportation.  The amount of resources and wealth in existence is not fixed.  So life is not a ‘zero sum game’.  One’s man gain does not have to be another man’s loss.  It’s true that at any given time there will be a finite amount of wealth in existence, but this can always be increased.  Economist Paul Pilzer has explored the process of wealth creation through his theory of economic alchemy.  Julian Simon also explored the potential infinitude of natural resources in detail.

The basic justifications for free market economics stem from these points:  (1) there is no fixed pool of resources or wealth.  New resources and wealth can be created, (2) the value of things does not reside in physical quantities or qualities but in their utility or value to other human beings, (3) wealth is created through acts of human ingenuity and creativity. 

To create wealth, people must be free to exercise their rational and creative faculties.  Reason is a dynamic process requiring the creation of multiple hypotheses and the testing and criticism of these hypotheses to determine which works best.  Something of economic value is something which speaks to human wants and needs.  It is human wants and needs which define what morality is.  Morality is the process of valuing something, and values are generated by rational minds.  There is a huge diversity of different values that people could hold.  So long as one person’s values do not negate another person’s values, a person must be fee to pursue the things of value to them.

It is no co-incidence that the word ‘value’ applies to both economics and to ethics.  Fair capitalism is literally the process of generating new values - both in the ethical and economic sense.  Morality is the process of creating values which harmonize with each other, rather than negating each other.  It is the process of trading value for value - the moral and the economic.

By learning to think more rationally and creativity and choosing to pursue only those values which enhance other values rather than negating them, we become more moral.  By fairly trading value for value with others we are enriched both spiritually and materially.  There is no limit to this process.