Note that pragramtism collapses to all other moral systems and thus is not a distinct moral position (see Open Letter to Academic Philosophy: All Your Moral Theories Are the Same).

It simply comes down to what is the thing you want that justifies your wanting anything else, which means the thing that you do not want for some other reason (as that other reason would then be the thing), but that you want entirely for itself.

And of course this thing must be the overriding thing, i.e. you are not asking about incidental goals that you do not pursue because you prefer something else and have to choose between them, but the goals you have that override all other goals, such that the thing (the ultimate goal) that you want for itself, is the thing you want above all else. That will then justify your entire moral system (and in fact will justify every moral system, because the analysis ends up the same for all rational agents).

If you do the work, you end up at a modern scientific version of Aristotle’s “eudaimonia” which is incorrectly translated today as “happiness” but actually more aptly means “satisfaction,” as in, satisfaction with yourself (who you are as a person) and the outcomes of what you are doing (your life results). It becomes self-contradictory to want dissatisfaction more than satisfaction because if you did want some kind of dissatisfaction most (like, say, a certain amount of frustration, challenge, uncertainty, and disorder in your life), then that is simply what satisfies you most, and so even that just is your satisfaction state. Thus even pursuing that goal ends up analytically simply “pursuing satisfaction” (with self and life).

All other goals then propagate from that, all the way to prosocial goals (honesty, reasonableness, courage, and compassion all derive as the best ways to achieve life-and-self satisfaction).

This is rational because there is no other place you will land if you follow the reasoning through without fallacy (and thus are reasoning logically) and it is objective because every step derives from an objective fact (a fact you cannot change by merely trying to think differently). It’s also universal (which is not the same thing as objective, since even idiosyncratic subjective preferences can be objective facts about you as a person), because all rational and informed agents will prefer the root goal of life-and-self satisfaction (for the reasons explained here in this article).

That you desire (or would, if reasoning rationally) life-and-self satisfaction above all things is an objective fact because you cannot change it (per above, it is logically impossible for your root goal to be anything else), and every derivative desire it entails follows from objective facts of the world you cannot change (the laws of physics and biology and psychology you are beholden to to achieve any goal).

For example, even in metaworlds (i.e. simworlds where we can alter the physics and biology and even our own psychology at will), you cannot escape the objective facts of Game Theory, and thus you must engage in certain behaviors over others to manage satisfaction within a community of other persons. That is simply an objective fact of the system you are in. It is not simply a matter of taste (least of all yours over against others’).

This includes limitations like you mention: time limits how we can allocate resources, which entails moral systems accordingly. We cannot subjectively “get rid” of these limits, and thus our moral systems must necessarily accommodate them, and this therefore objectively restrains what moral systems are “correct” (as in, will actually maximize your life-and-self satisfaction). Hence infallibility and omniscience are not expected in any credible moral system (they are not “moral oughts”).

This plays out in legal systems in demarcating the difference between criminal intent and criminal or tort negligence, and between criminal or tort negligence and non-responsibility (i.e. how much effort is actually morally expected of a person before we deem them to have acted reasonably and thus are not blameworthy for having missed something).

More abstractly, I discuss the question of allocation and risk theory (which is what you are actually talking about) in Your Own Moral Reasoning: Some Things to Consider (which describes level one morals, i.e. an end-point moral system). Which I then justify in The Real Basis of a Moral World (which describes level two justification, i.e. a mid-point metaethics). And which I then ground here in The Objective Value Cascade (which describes a level three justification, i.e. a ground-point metaethics).

though remember, “arbitrary” and “subjective” do not mean the same thing, and it’s important to keep clear what all these terms really mean

Yes, this is a distinction I struggle with, as I do with your use of “objective,” “rational,” and “value.” I appreciate your attempts to be clear in what you mean by these terms, mostly because others will often use them quite differently.

I fancy myself a pragmatist, and I usually value knowledge and rationality (2 and 3) only inasmuch as they increase the probability of my goals being achieved and not sufficient unto themselves, but you posit as objective fact that they — of necessity — will do exactly that and increase utility. How can we know this objectively and rationally? I can see that skepticism on this point is a waste of my time, but for some reason I can’t seem to shake my Cartesian demons on this point.

I mean, valuing 2 and 3 certainly seems to help in most circumstances, however sometimes time constraints push me to take shortcuts via (educated) intuition and guesses that shortcut some of the due diligence that 2 and 3 seem to demand. Also, I often use techniques like pseudo-random number generation (sometimes called “evolutionary algorithms” or “Monte Carlo”) to solve multi-variable problems which serve to cut out my conscious attention from critical processes that find the answers for me where a more comprehensive and exhaustive approach would get us to 100% certainty in the answer, because 95% certainty is usually good enough to attain the goal. Perhaps I’m thinking about these two values incorrectly?

If you look for the joys and pleasures in things that are often too easily overlooked due to your obsessing over some other objectives instead, the availability of eudaimonia increases.

The solution to the problems of Afghanistan is not the elimination of Finland.

You’re off the rails of even common sense here.

The solution to bad government is better government, not no government. Analogously, the solution to a failing state is becoming a successful one. The problems of Afghanistan are the same as faced by literally every now-successful region (from Europe to Asia to the Americas). So we know what the solution is. We just have to invest in it. Meanwhile, that we are leaving Afghanistan to take the hundreds of years we did to crawl out does not somehow magically mean no one should be allowed to enjoy living in Finland.

So maybe you have a case to make to Afghans that they should stop having kids. But that argument doesn’t hold for Finns. If a reasonable number of new people can be gifted with life in Finland, they should be. Goods ought to be shared (just not shared so thin as to turn them ill). Hence the concluding paragraph of the article you are responding to:

This is not to be confused with ZPG however. Seeking a smaller and thus sustainable population within an available environment-space by humane means is a defensible utility target. But extinction is as immoral (and irrational) as any suicide usually is (on the conditions for moral suicide and their relative rarity in actual fact, see Sense and Goodness without God, V.2.3.1, pp. 341-42). This bears an analogy to the equally foolish argument that “our government’s policies are bad, therefore we should eliminate government,” rather than what is actually the correct and only rational response, that “our government’s policies are bad, therefore we need better government” (see Sic Semper Regulationes). One can say exactly the same of the entirety of human society. We already have working examples of good communities on good trajectories; so we know the failure to extend that globally is an ethical failure of action on our part and not some existentially unavoidable fate we should run away from like cowards.

You are now confusing “regulating population size” with “antinatalism.” That’s a non sequitur. That we should reduce and not increase population growth is true. That is not antinatalism.

I am a well-read philosopher who has extensively studied the scientific and diagnostic work on psychopathy. It’s fundamental to my work in moral philosophy.

And no therapist says “healthy person.” So I am skeptical that you are telling the truth here. Which is typical of sociopaths.

But I am happy to discuss this with your therapist. Give them my name and have them reach out to me to discuss your disturbing behavior here.

You say that a computer wouldn’t have a desire, but your computer would have a desire to live in a world where there are more pleasures.

This tells me you read my comment, but not the article.

Read the article. It answers your question.