The Power Process

My thoughts on morality have drifted so severely that I cannot in good faith call it "amoral egoism" anymore.

In premise form the moral system is very simple:

P1: Influence and Authority

For any moral system to have real authority it must have the ability to influence human behavior.

A moral code needs to influence behavior to be effective.

P2: Connection to Motivation

"Ought" only applies (has action-guiding force) if it connects to a rational agent's motivational set.

It fails if it does not connect: imagine telling a rock it ought to fall upward.

P3: Internal Source of Motivation

All moral systems based on external authority and motivational sources have variability, e.g., societal opinions can change.

Therefore, the most sustained and variance-minimizing source of motivation must come from an internal source.

P4: Telos and Target

Every moral system must have a telos, a target.

A target that sets a structural claim such as "be self-directed" is making a smaller claim than one that claims "maximize utility among all beings," for example.

P5: Contextual Classification

Moral systems can either be context-externalist or internalist regardless of whether an individual adopts said system.

• The former is a system where goals and criteria are external to the individual.
• The latter is where the individual is the source of the evaluation.

P6: Rational Structure of Moral Life

Applying all the previous premises, an individual should then rationally ought to structure their moral life around conscious, autonomously generated goal-pursuit.

Because it represents the motivationally most reliable, and is teleologically less arbitrary than first-order systems.