The following email (and incorporated attachment) is a continuation of the written critical exchange arranged with libertarian writer George H. Smith in the summer of 2003 as a paid critique service for the purpose of obtaining some logical analysis of the philosophical basis of the Self-Sovereign Individual Project by a knowledgeable libertarian thinker. (See Link Note)
Paul's inline comments follow George's intact email and incorporated WORD attachment critique of the early September 2003 version of the Declaration of Individual Independence, annotated version. Current DOII_annotated.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Part Four
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 16:28:51 -0500
From: George H. Smith
To: Paul Antonik Wakfer
Paul,
The enclosed attachment contains Part Four.
I will be sending one more part, possibly later today.
George
Part Four
Start time: 2.49 pm.
Thus, what an adult needs for the full promotion of his happiness is the maximum freedom which this common human nature allows in reality, consonant with the equal maximum freedom of every other human being (ie. compossible freedoms). It is my contention that a clear, relatively concise delineation of a maximal compossible set of natural freedoms is possible, and it is what I have tried to set forth in this Declaration and in the Natural Social Contract [in progress] which follows it.
I think this is a good summary. The only problem I have is with your use of the term "compossible," which refers to rights (or freedoms) that can be exercised simultaneously without conflict. This is apparently what you mean by "consonant with," but even so the meaning is not entirely clear from the text.
11) A fundamental aspect of the nature of human beings is that one cannot directly affect the emotional state of another. All sensory input must be evaluated by the brain, if only subconsciously and automatically, before it generates an emotion.
It is not the brain per se that evaluates, but the mind.
This is the most important aspect of the phrase "his sole responsibility". Others can contribute to its generation, but only an individual human can be the essential cause of an increase of his own happiness in all of its many dimensions. This is not only because the manner in which he filters, evaluates, combines and integrates his sensory input is ultimately under his volitional control, but also because only he can know the intimate and complex details of what contributes to his own happiness.
We don't have volitional control over the integration of sensations into percepts. For example, I don't volitionally decide to integrate the various sensory inputs (color, shape, etc.) so that I perceive a rock or a tree or a bird. This is done automatically by the brain. Of course, volition does enter into how I identify and characterize these perceptions, but this is a different matter than the experience of the perceptions themselves.
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Moreover, there are many cases in which the fate of our happiness is not our sole responsibility. A person who was kidnapped and tortured by goons of Saddam Hussein, for example, cannot be held responsible for the fact that he was unhappy while being tortured.
It might reasonably be said that a person is solely responsible for his own happiness in a perfectly free society, in which no other person is able to disrupt his life-decisions via the use of force, but the use of force to contravene a person's will can clearly diminish a person's happiness against his will. (Indeed, as I understand it, this is one of your arguments against the violation of rights.) But even here outlaws -- those willing to use violence against the law -- can still interfere with a person's happiness. (An illness or natural disaster can have the same effect.) It is therefore wrong to say that the individual is solely responsible for his own happiness. If this were true, one could be as happy in a totalitarian regime as in a free society, in which case the argument for a free society would be considerably weakened, if not destroyed altogether.
I am not saying that he can easily or even ever completely control his evaluations or know with certainty what will cause him to be happy. I am only saying that others have even less chance to control and evaluate it to suit him best than he does. They have no ability at all to control his sensory input once it is past his senses, and they cannot read his mind and know his intimate evaluations of sensory data to any significant degree.
The gist of this passage is quite reasonable, but the statement that a person might not be able to ever completely control his evaluations seems to conflict with your earlier claim that a person is solely responsible for his own happiness -- assuming, that is, that you wish to defend the linkage between our evaluations and our happiness.
I find the reference to controlling "sensory input" confusing. The key objection against coercion is not that it attempts to control the victim's sensory input, but that it forces the victim to act against his own judgment (his will ) in pursuit of a good life.
12) In order to reach the best social arrangement for the purpose of maximizing the achievement of his potential and ultimately his lifetime happiness, the first and most important step that an adult must take is to state his disagreement with those social arrangements which decrease his ability to attain these goals by reducing his choices and his freedom of action (and that of others with whom he needs to interface to reach his goals) below what it could and should naturally be.….
I don't agree with this at all, despite the reasons you present subsequently. It strikes me as a variant of the collectivism you yourself protest to state that every person must take a specific course of action in order to maximize his happiness. A respect for individuality should teach us that people achieve happiness in different ways, depending on their values, personalities, and situations.
It certainly isn't the case that one must publicly "state his disagreement" with statist policies in order to maximize happiness. On the contrary, to the extent this might call attention to oneself and make oneself a target of governmental repression, it might have precisely the opposite effect. In short, this is a highly contextual matter, one that cannot be reduced to an either/or formulation.
13) It is important to note that the declarer is not saying that he definitely intends to break any laws and regulations. All that he is saying is that these laws and regulations have no moral validity and that he reserves to himself the freedom of choice to decide whether to obey them or not. Though I decided not to use the term, the declarer is, in effect, formally "seceding" from the state.
I like this statement, but I would not defend it as a necessary condition for maximizing one's happiness. It is quite possible that a public struggle against power might actually decrease one's happiness. Some people prefer to fight for principles, even at the risk of decreasing their happiness. This is often a cost of this kind of activity.
Of course you might say that a person is more likely to be happy if his struggle is successful, but struggles of this kind often have a low probability of success. I think the best statement of the reason for fighting, even in what may appear to be a lost cause, was given by the 16th century philosopher Richard Hooker: "Though for no other cause yet for this, that posterity may know we have not let things pass away, as in a dream."
16) By "self-evident" I do not mean "obvious" (nor did the Framers of TDOI mean that). It is simply meant that the truths about to be enumerated have been empirically determined by studying reality, and that any sound, logical study of reality will discover the same truths.
This is a very idiosyncratic meaning for "self evident." As for its use in Jefferson's Declaration, no one is quite sure what he meant by it. One possibility is a contextual meaning, i.e., that the basic formulation of inalienable rights was taken as self-evident, or "given,"for the purpose of what follows, since few people among those Jefferson was appealing to would question the validity of these rights. Another possibility stems from the fact that Jefferson subscribed to the "moral sense" theory of Scottish philosophers like Hutcheson and Hume, according to which we have a "moral sense" that is analogous to our physical senses. This moral sense, it was claimed, enables us to "perceive" the fundamental principles of right and wrong directly and immediately, without an intervening intellectual or evaluative process.
I don't agree with this theory, and neither do you. None of this misleading and ultimately irrelevant digression on the meaning of "self-evident" would be necessary, were you not so intent on mimicking the wording of the original Declaration. You have created an unnecessary problem for yourself where none should exist.
In other words, they are discoverable by the scientific method which is the only valid method of determining "truth" which is currently known. Thus, the validity of "these truths" is no more and no less than the validity of the laws of physics, for example.
If the truths of physics and other hard sciences were "self-evident," then there would be no need to use the scientific method to corroborate them. It is precisely self-evident truths that don't stand in need of empirical corroboration.
Moreover, the scientific method is not applicable to the verification of moral truths. For one thing, it is impossible to establish the controlled conditions in complex social phenomena that are needed to conduct experiments. For another thing, if you subscribe to a theory of free will, it is quite absurd to speak of "constants" in human action of the sort that are presupposed by the scientific method.
There is no absolute truth in reality except for those relationships which hold between pure abstractions - between artificial constructs used as models of reality, such as logic, mathematics and other theories. In scientific terms, all knowledge of real things is held with a probability of validity of less than 100%. When we say some fact of reality is true, it should always be understood to mean that we only think that it is highly likely to be so every time that it is observed under circumstances as nearly identical as we can make them. However, this "nearly identical" is where the problem lies with achieving certainty in reality, since no two events can ever be completely identical.
I completely reject this model of "certainty," but it would take me too long to explain why. I discuss this problem at some length in "The Career of Reason," a chapter in Why Atheism? I also discuss related issues in "The Skepticism of Faith," chapter 5 in Atheism: The Case Against God.
II. that as a human, I have the potential for self-awareness, introspection, abstraction, rational thought and volitional action directed toward my own survival and happiness.
18) These are mental qualities which all scientific evidence shows are possible for any human mind which is not physiologically defective. This set of mental attributes may even be unique to humans among all the Earth's current lifeforms, and thus, may most essentially differentiate humans from other animals. It is noteworthy that these characteristics are all related to the mind. They are sometimes summarized by the term "sentient", but that term, meaning "conscious" or capable of sensation or feeling, is much less than the full set of mental qualities which characterize humans. Certainly, any human individual who has the ability to read, understand and agree with this Declaration and its corollaries, must have these mental attributes, at the very least. Note that the word "rational" is used in its meaning of "exercising reason" - ie. exercising one's faculty for gaining knowledge of reality. As stated before, by "adult" I mean a human individual who has achieved these potentials and is implementing their implications, regardless of age.
This is fine, except it is a bit problematic to speak of "scientific evidence" in favor of "volition" -- if, that is, by "volition" you mean "free will," in contrast to its broader meaning of any act of will, whether deterministic or free. I would contend that the argument for volition (in the sense of "free will") is philosophical rather than scientific.
III. that although my evolutionary purpose, as an animal, is merely the survival of my genome, now that I have matured to adulthood, as a human adult, this evolutionary purpose has been superceded by the maximizing of my lifetime integrated happiness in accord with my individual abilities and the valuations directed by my rational thought.
19) The only reasonable meaning of "purpose" for a non-sentient lifeform (if any such idea of "purpose" is reasonable at all) is procreation leading to the survival of its genome.
I agree with your caveat. I think it is a mistake to refer to "purpose" at all except in regard to rational beings. Some Aristotelian philosophers (e.g., Ayn Rand) distinguish between "goal directed" and "purposeful," but I think even this distinction is suspect.
By "happiness over his lifetime", I mean his instantaneous happiness mathematically integrated over his whole lifetime - which I shall hereafter call his "lifetime happiness".
It makes no sense to me to speak of happiness as being "mathematically integrated." This would require invariable ordinal units of happiness, and I know of no such thing.
IV. that one consequence of my human separateness is that the semantic contents of my mind cannot be determined with any significant degree of accuracy by any other adult. In particular, my individual purposes are both uniquely different from, and cannot be significantly determined ahead of my actions by any other adult.
If, by "semantic contents," you mean meaning, then of course this can be determined "with a significant degree of accuracy" by other people. If this were impossible, then communication via language would be impossible. Your Declaration and Annotations are communicating the "semantic contents" of your own mind. Do you know wish to say that your meaning cannot be known "with any significant degree of accuracy by any other adult"?
As for whether your purpose can be determined by others before you take a specific action, this is also highly questionable. We often communicate our purposes before taking an action, and this is what makes cooperation with others possible. Is this method infallible? No, of course not, but it needn't be infallible to qualify as reasonably accurate.
(To be continued….)
Ghs
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[Although Paul never sent the response comments below to George H. Smith (since George never replied to the others in the first group, what was the point?), as with the previous responses, George's original is indented in dark blue while Paul's comments are in black.]
Thus, what an adult needs for the full promotion of his happiness is the maximum freedom which this common human nature allows in reality, consonant with the equal maximum freedom of every other human being (ie. compossible freedoms). It is my contention that a clear, relatively concise delineation of a maximal compossible set of natural freedoms is possible, and it is what I have tried to set forth in this Declaration and in the Natural Social Contract [in progress] which follows it.
I think this is a good summary. The only problem I have is with your use of the term "compossible," which refers to rights (or freedoms) that can be exercised simultaneously without conflict. This is apparently what you mean by "consonant with," but even so the meaning is not entirely clear from the text.
"Consonant with" means "in accord with" which means "not in conflict with" ie. mutually satisfiable ie. compossible. However, just so that it is fully clear I have changed the text to "not in conflict with".
11) A fundamental aspect of the nature of human beings is that one cannot directly affect the emotional state of another. All sensory input must be evaluated by the brain, if only subconsciously and automatically, before it generates an emotion.
It is not the brain per se that evaluates, but the mind.
No. There are "background" processors in the brain which analyze and evaluate. The conscious mind then gets the result and can modify it volitionally and consciously by causing reassessment. However, all actual evaluation is done subconsciously. This was proven many decades ago by neurophysiology studies which showed that the brain activity which generated any thought occurred about 1/2 second before the thought entered the conscious window (see Mind Time by Benjamin Libet. Besides, all mind activity is also brain activity. The brain is the real existent which causes the events that are perceived as "mind".
This is the most important aspect of the phrase "his sole responsibility". Others can contribute to its generation, but only an individual human can be the essential cause of an increase of his own happiness in all of its many dimensions. This is not only because the manner in which he filters, evaluates, combines and integrates his sensory input is ultimately under his volitional control, but also because only he can know the intimate and complex details of what contributes to his own happiness.
We don't have volitional control over the integration of sensations into percepts. For example, I don't volitionally decide to integrate the various sensory inputs (color, shape, etc.) so that I perceive a rock or a tree or a bird. This is done automatically by the brain.
Yes and no. Yes, it is done automatically. But no, one still has volitional control to reject such integration and examine only the parts. The automated integration is certainly a useful aid, but one is not bound to accept it. To be able to examine all the detailed parts and not be distracted by the whole, or even to see only it, is the hallmark of an advanced analytical brain/mind.
Of course, volition does enter into how I identify and characterize these perceptions, but this is a different matter than the experience of the perceptions themselves.
Moreover, there are many cases in which the fate of our happiness is not our sole responsibility. A person who was kidnapped and tortured by goons of Saddam Hussein, for example, cannot be held responsible for the fact that he was unhappy while being tortured.
Sure he can! Why was he in such a place that capture was possible? Very few people kidnap and torture another for no reason at all. What had he done to provoke such action? Why had he continued to allow such criminals to exist?
However, my full phrase was "he appreciates that the achievement of that potential and the attainment of that happiness is solely his own responsibility". This phrase was clearly meant to relate to the positive attainment of happiness being his responsibility rather than that of someone else. It was not meant to relate to any unhappiness caused by the physical violations of another.
It might reasonably be said that a person is solely responsible for his own happiness in a perfectly free society, in which no other person is able to disrupt his life-decisions via the use of force, but the use of force to contravene a person's will can clearly diminish a person's happiness against his will. (Indeed, as I understand it, this is one of your arguments against the violation of rights.) But even here outlaws -- those willing to use violence against the law -- can still interfere with a person's happiness. (An illness or natural disaster can have the same effect.) It is therefore wrong to say that the individual is solely responsible for his own happiness. If this were true, one could be as happy in a totalitarian regime as in a free society, in which case the argument for a free society would be considerably weakened, if not destroyed altogether.
George, who or what else can be responsible for any individual's happiness except that individual himself? Here you have an individual - essentially separated from the rest of reality. He acts as rationally as possible to cause his maximum lifetime happiness. He is less than optimally happy to the extent to which his actions do not generate the greatest possible happiness (ie they were faulty in achieving their purpose). It is futile and unfruitful for a person to blame anything but himself for this undesired result. This is true whether the putative cause is either illness (which he can learn to avoid, reduce negative effects and/or quickly repair), natural disasters (which he can learn to prevent, guard against or otherwise avoid), or other people (who he can protect himself from or remove himself to where they are not present). Furthermore, blaming any of these things for his problems will not teach him how to learn to avoid them in the future. For his own long range self-interest, a mature person must realize that his happiness is totally his own responsibility. Otherwise, he will excuse much pain and sorrow as unavoidable acts of god (or other uncontrollables of reality) and never even try to figure out how to avoid them happening again.
I am not saying that he can easily or even ever completely control his evaluations or know with certainty what will cause him to be happy. I am only saying that others have even less chance to control and evaluate it to suit him best than he does. They have no ability at all to control his sensory input once it is past his senses, and they cannot read his mind and know his intimate evaluations of sensory data to any significant degree.
The gist of this passage is quite reasonable, but the statement that a person might not be able to ever completely control his evaluations seems to conflict with your earlier claim that a person is solely responsible for his own happiness -- assuming, that is, that you wish to defend the linkage between our evaluations and our happiness.
There is no inconsistency. The above is a statement of the practical reality of human abilities. The ability to understand and control oneself is an unbounded potential. One can get better and better at it, but it is something of which one can never fully attain perfection. This does not bear on the "sole responsibility" of any human for his own happiness since that "responsibility" does not imply that he can fully attain optimal happiness (ie both always correctly determine that the effect of any given action will be best possible for his happiness and also never take any action which does not have the exact desired and determined effect). It means only that he is responsible for aspiring to optimal happiness and working to get better and better at attaining it. Again, optimal happiness is a potential to which a rational man aspires, but will never actually reach, because he is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. The very use of the word "optimal" is perhaps misleading since it implies that one knows the value ahead of time and certainly that such a level of happiness is bounded. However, I don't know how better to express it at this time.
I find the reference to controlling "sensory input" confusing. The key objection against coercion is not that it attempts to control the victim's sensory input, but that it forces the victim to act against his own judgment (his will) in pursuit of a good life.
Censorship and torture would be examples of "controlling sensory input". Any restriction of possible choices (freedom) is "controlling sensory input". It does not have to be related to forcing anyone "to act against his own judgment". Most of the harm done by governments is not directly through the use of force, but by the distortion of reality which prevents choices from being available to individuals. For example, if it were not for government monopolization and regulation of space exploration, it is highly likely that humans would be living in space, mining the asteroids, etc by now.
However, there was no intention in my text at this point to address coercion at all. I was merely expressing the ways in which a separate person could not evaluate and act to promote any other individual's happiness.
12) In order to reach the best social arrangement for the purpose of maximizing the achievement of his potential and ultimately his lifetime happiness, the first and most important step that an adult must take is to state his disagreement with those social arrangements which decrease his ability to attain these goals by reducing his choices and his freedom of action (and that of others with whom he needs to interface to reach his goals) below what it could and should naturally be.….
I don't agree with this at all, despite the reasons you present subsequently. It strikes me as a variant of the collectivism you yourself protest to state that every person must take a specific course of action in order to maximize his happiness. A respect for individuality should teach us that people achieve happiness in different ways, depending on their values, personalities, and situations.
The reason why such a Declaration is imperative is in order to achieve the maximum possible happiness which reality allows, not merely optimal happiness under one's present conditions. It is certainly true that people can achieve a local maximum of happiness in different ways (one can be happy even in a prison if one ignores what one is missing from lack of liberty), but in order to achieve a global maximum, one must promote one's disagreement with the social status quo and take action to change those current social arrangements in order to gain more freedom (possible choices). Because in order to attain a global maximum happiness state, an individual needs the choices which only the efforts of many others can provide, he really has no alternative except to declare his dissatisfaction with the present state of society and to attempt to convince others to change to a better social arrangement.
[Note: At this point, the preceding paragraph was added to the end of annotation 12) of the DOII.]
It certainly isn't the case that one must publicly "state his disagreement" with statist policies in order to maximize happiness. On the contrary, to the extent this might call attention to oneself and make oneself a target of governmental repression, it might have precisely the opposite effect. In short, this is a highly contextual matter, one that cannot be reduced to an either/or formulation.
In a fully totalitarian social system, you are correct that it might do more harm than good. But even there, whether that is true or not depends on exactly how it is done. Such a statement can also be done in a way which is not aggressive towards the state and will be acceptable to them. To a certain extent this can be done under any society if one carefully judges what to say. In current North America, I think that the situation is not yet quite that bad, although if the statement of disagreement took the form of actually inciting law breaking it could be harmful. Gaining more freedom will always require the possibility of losing some. Nothing is ever gained without other things being forgone or the chance of some loss. What I am saying is that one should always go to the line just short of harming oneself rather than not protesting at all, if one is working to gain maximum happiness. However in the end, I am simply looking to find and work with those who are willing to make such a public Declaration.
13) It is important to note that the declarer is not saying that he definitely intends to break any laws and regulations. All that he is saying is that these laws and regulations have no moral validity and that he reserves to himself the freedom of choice to decide whether to obey them or not. Though I decided not to use the term, the declarer is, in effect, formally "seceding" from the state.
I like this statement, but I would not defend it as a necessary condition for maximizing one's happiness. It is quite possible that a public struggle against power might actually decrease one's happiness. Some people prefer to fight for principles, even at the risk of decreasing their happiness. This is often a cost of this kind of activity.
As I agreed above, yes, trying to gain more freedom (possible choices) will always have the potential for loss of freedom. However, if one does not try one will surely not succeed. For the reasons which I have now stated, I am convinced that the course of action which I have outlined is necessary in order to achieve a global maximum of lifetime happiness. Once I have attempted all possible rational arguments, there will be many who I give up on. In the end, those who are too timid to agree with me will not make the Declaration, join the Project and become Freemen.
Of course you might say that a person is more likely to be happy if his struggle is successful, but struggles of this kind often have a low probability of success. I think the best statement of the reason for fighting, even in what may appear to be a lost cause, was given by the 16th century philosopher Richard Hooker: "Though for no other cause yet for this, that posterity may know we have not let things pass away, as in a dream."
The beauty of the method which I propose in the Natural Social Contract is that it has little cost attached to it and success grows as the number of participants grow. It is not like an all or nothing revolution which I agree is fraught with the danger of failure. Since I do not agree that anything which happens after one's death can rationally be a value to one, I cannot agree with Hooker's statement (or any of the many others like it). I am only interested in things which may bring happiness to me in my lifetime. One of these can of course be the happiness of logical, rational writing and persuasion, even if the end purpose of that work does not happen within one's lifetime. However, to actually suffer (as with a martyr) for the benefit of others in the future is something with which I do not agree and will not intend to do.
16) By "self-evident" I do not mean "obvious" (nor did the Framers of TDOI mean that). It is simply meant that the truths about to be enumerated have been empirically determined by studying reality, and that any sound, logical study of reality will discover the same truths.
This is a very idiosyncratic meaning for "self evident."
It is that meaning of "self-evident" that would apply to axioms of reality from which scientific laws of nature or logic/arithmetic rules of operation are derived. However, I have now altered the text to make that clearer.
As for its use in Jefferson's Declaration, no one is quite sure what he meant by it. One possibility is a contextual meaning, i.e., that the basic formulation of inalienable rights was taken as self-evident, or "given,"for the purpose of what follows, since few people among those Jefferson was appealing to would question the validity of these rights. Another possibility stems from the fact that Jefferson subscribed to the "moral sense" theory of Scottish philosophers like Hutcheson and Hume, according to which we have a "moral sense" that is analogous to our physical senses. This moral sense, it was claimed, enables us to "perceive" the fundamental principles of right and wrong directly and immediately, without an intervening intellectual or evaluative process.
My viewpoint is that of a rational thinker and scientist investigating the reality of human beings and finding certain facts which are so fundamental as to be considered axioms. Note that the things which I state are "self-evident" are mostly not moral imperatives. In fact, it is not until number VII of these "self-evident" truths that anything like a moral principle is stated.
I don't agree with this theory, and neither do you. None of this misleading and ultimately irrelevant digression on the meaning of "self-evident" would be necessary, were you not so intent on mimicking the wording of the original Declaration. You have created an unnecessary problem for yourself where none should exist.
For the reasons I have stated above, there is no problem. Self-evident is a perfectly good phrase for my purposes. If it were not, then I would change it. I suspect that Jefferson, in fact, meant it in a similar fashion to which I do - that he considered his "self-evident truths" to be the axioms of the reality of human nature. However, his mistake and the mistake of all "equality of man" and "rights" theorists was to suppose that any concepts such as "rights" were so fundamental that they should be considered themselves to be such axioms.
In other words, they are discoverable by the scientific method which is the only valid method of determining "truth" which is currently known. Thus, the validity of "these truths" is no more and no less than the validity of the laws of physics, for example.
If the truths of physics and other hard sciences were "self-evident," then there would be no need to use the scientific method to corroborate them. It is precisely self-evident truths that don't stand in need of empirical corroboration.
Please look in any dictionary to see that another meaning of "self-evident" is "axiomatic". You are confusing the scientific investigation of detailed effects with the axioms of scientific theories (which once discovered and understood, are often quite "obvious" - as many fundamental truths are once they are "seen"). Moreover, simple, almost obvious axioms can have enormously complex consequences. Often the complexity is such that it is impossible to logically deduce all the consequences and they can only be discovered and/or fully proven by empirical methods. The human body is a case in point. That is why biology is not yet a theoretical science of the same nature as, say, physics.
Each of my "self-evident" axioms of human nature are, in fact, quite obvious if one directs one's rational analytical mind at the reality of human nature. If you do not agree, then why have you not questioned any of the actual items which I have listed?
Moreover, the scientific method is not applicable to the verification of moral truths. For one thing, it is impossible to establish the controlled conditions in complex social phenomena that are needed to conduct experiments. For another thing, if you subscribe to a theory of free will, it is quite absurd to speak of "constants" in human action of the sort that are presupposed by the scientific method.
I have now realized that my use of the phrase "scientific method" was inconsistent here with my use elsewhere on MoreLife and I have now corrected this inconsistency. More properly it is the method of rational empiricism (observation of data relevant to a problem, formulation of an hypothesis from which the data may be derived, and to the extent possible, testing of the hypothesis) that is fully capable of studying and understanding all aspects of reality. The scientific method is that portion of rational empiricism which deals with measurable data. However, the general scientific method is not only applicable to those sciences which can do controlled experiments, but also to such non-experimental sciences as geology, epidemiology, paleontology, anatomy and astronomy. This is because controlled experiments are not the only method of testing an hypothesis. An hypothesis may be also tested by deducing effects from it that were not observed prior to its formulation and then observing to see that such effects are valid. Mathematics, logic, and praxeology do not rely on measurable data and hence do not use the scientific method, but they are still part of rational empiricism.
As for "moral truths", in general I see no evidence for them as anything more than imaginary rules of behavior which do not have any real existence.
There is no absolute truth in reality except for those relationships which hold between pure abstractions - between artificial constructs used as models of reality, such as logic, mathematics and other theories. In scientific terms, all knowledge of real things is held with a probability of validity of less than 100%. When we say some fact of reality is true, it should always be understood to mean that we only think that it is highly likely to be so every time that it is observed under circumstances as nearly identical as we can make them. However, this "nearly identical" is where the problem lies with achieving certainty in reality, since no two events can ever be completely identical.
I completely reject this model of "certainty," but it would take me too long to explain why. I discuss this problem at some length in "The Career of Reason," a chapter in Why Atheism? I also discuss related issues in "The Skepticism of Faith," chapter 5 in Atheism: The Case Against God.
I think that you have missed the importance of my opening statement of the above paragraph: "except for those relationships which hold between pure abstractions - between artificial constructs used as models of reality, such as logic, mathematics and other theories". In order to make that clearer and because of my own inconsistency with respect to scientific method and its applicability, I have greatly modified the text and it should now fully distinguish between measurement attributes and those which relate only to logic and/or arithmetic.
II. that as a human, I have the potential for self-awareness, introspection, abstraction, rational thought and volitional action directed toward my own survival and happiness.
18) These are mental qualities which all scientific evidence shows are possible for any human mind which is not physiologically defective. This set of mental attributes may even be unique to humans among all the Earth's current lifeforms, and thus, may most essentially differentiate humans from other animals. It is noteworthy that these characteristics are all related to the mind. They are sometimes summarized by the term "sentient", but that term, meaning "conscious" or capable of sensation or feeling, is much less than the full set of mental qualities which characterize humans. Certainly, any human individual who has the ability to read, understand and agree with this Declaration and its corollaries, must have these mental attributes, at the very least. Note that the word "rational" is used in its meaning of "exercising reason" - ie. exercising one's faculty for gaining knowledge of reality. As stated before, by "adult" I mean a human individual who has achieved these potentials and is implementing their implications, regardless of age.
This is fine, except it is a bit problematic to speak of "scientific evidence" in favor of "volition" -- if, that is, by "volition" you mean "free will," in contrast to its broader meaning of any act of will, whether deterministic or free. I would contend that the argument for volition (in the sense of "free will") is philosophical rather than scientific.
First, from my point of view, philosophy is a branch of science, the study of reality. Philosophy is merely meta-science. With respect to the existence and source of "free will", I do not take a position within my system. There is no need to do so since the actions of any individual which aim to maximize his happiness will not be affected by such a position. However, by "volitional action", I do mean the power of evaluating, deciding, choosing and acting, which is the "broader" meaning to which you refer. But finally, the study of free will needs to be both scientific and philosophical. A good starting point for both is: The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will Edited by Benjamin Libet, Anthony Freeman and Keith Sutherland.
III. that although my evolutionary purpose, as an animal, is merely the survival of my genome, now that I have matured to adulthood, as a human adult, this evolutionary purpose has been superceded by the maximizing of my lifetime integrated happiness in accord with my individual abilities and the valuations directed by my rational thought.
19) The only reasonable meaning of "purpose" for a non-sentient lifeform (if any such idea of "purpose" is reasonable at all) is procreation leading to the survival of its genome.
I agree with your caveat. I think it is a mistake to refer to "purpose" at all except in regard to rational beings. Some Aristotelian philosophers (e.g., Ayn Rand) distinguish between "goal directed" and "purposeful," but I think even this distinction is suspect.
We are in agreement except that I remind you of my earlier point about the rationality of lifeforms - that in the evolutionary history there has been a continuum of rational abilities from inanimate matter up to humans, and therefore, that it is mistaken to conclude that humans somehow have a total monopoly on all rationality (and thus are the only lifeforms with purposes).
By "happiness over his lifetime", I mean his instantaneous happiness mathematically integrated over his whole lifetime - which I shall hereafter call his "lifetime happiness".
It makes no sense to me to speak of happiness as being "mathematically integrated." This would require invariable ordinal units of happiness, and I know of no such thing.
You raised this subject earlier (and the difference between ordinal and cardinal was refuted) in Section 5.
IV. that one consequence of my human separateness is that the semantic contents of my mind cannot be determined with any significant degree of accuracy by any other adult. In particular, my individual purposes are both uniquely different from, and cannot be significantly determined ahead of my actions by any other adult.
If, by "semantic contents," you mean meaning, then of course this can be determined "with a significant degree of accuracy" by other people. If this were impossible, then communication via language would be impossible. Your Declaration and Annotations are communicating the "semantic contents" of your own mind. Do you know wish to say that your meaning cannot be known "with any significant degree of accuracy by any other adult"?
This item was meant to indicate the inability of person A to ascertain the inner workings of the brain/mind of person B without any kind of cooperation by person B. I have now made this clearer by inserting "completeness or" before "accuracy" and placing "without my cooperation" at the end of the first sentence.
However, it is also true that, with the possible exception of two people who are in almost constant contact with one another, one individual cannot communicate a significant amount of the total content of his brain/mind to another individual no matter how hard he tries. And that anything very complex which is communicated is only vaguely done (just look at the trouble which you and I have had - even when we both began with the very best of intentions to be friends). Most of the understandings which are gained by two people are from fragments of communication plus much hard thought and work by each other to gain deeper understanding.
As for whether your purpose can be determined by others before you take a specific action, this is also highly questionable. We often communicate our purposes before taking an action, and this is what makes cooperation with others possible. Is this method infallible? No, of course not, but it needn't be infallible to qualify as reasonably accurate.
I thought it was clear by stating "ahead of my actions" (which actions certainly include communication) that I meant determination of purposes without communication as well, as in the first sentence.
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