Deterministic Moral Forces (DMF)

Deterministic Moral Forces is the final-pillar result that morality is deterministic, not objective: moral behavior, moral judgment, and even punishment are causal products of prior conditions, which dissolves retributive moral desert while keeping moral life real as an emergent, valuer-grounded system (see Term 13).

Book: Existential Logicism. Location in text: Chapter 8 (“Deterministic Morality (pillar 7)”), especially sections 8.1 through 8.11, Appendix 8.4 (“Formal Derivation of Deterministic Moral Forces (DMF)”), and Appendix 8.12 (“Formalizing the Is–Ought Representation”).

WHAT IT IS

DMF begins where the Contingency Guillotine leaves you (see Term 12). If morality is not an objective law written into the universe, the first reaction is often a hard question dressed up as a crude one: if there is no cosmic moral statute, how do I know I should not do something obviously horrific?

DMF’s answer is that the question is framed backward. Morality is not a stance-free law you discover from outside. Morality is a pattern that arises inside a world full of valuing systems. And those valuing systems are not exempt from causation.

The core thesis, stated plainly in the chapter, is that morality is deterministic, not objective. Moral decisions are not the output of a ghost-like chooser floating above physics. They are the outcome of a chain of causes that includes biology, history, environment, learning, culture, and the present causal state of your brain. If you rewind the universe to the same initial conditions, the same “choice” occurs again. In DMF, that is not a denial that you deliberate; it is a claim about what deliberation is: the world calculating itself at the level of a person.

This is why DMF separates the experience of will from the metaphysics people smuggle into it. The will you feel is real as an experience. The conflict, hesitation, resolve, and restraint are real. DMF just says the will is entirely caused. There is no extra, contra-causal power that makes a human being an exception to the causal closure of reality.

From that starting point, moral norms stop looking mystical. Societies do not create morality from pure freedom, and they do not discover it as a set of universal moral particles. They develop moral rules because those rules work. “Don’t murder,” “don’t steal,” “be fair,” “protect children,” “keep promises,” and the rest become stable because they reduce predictable harm and enable cooperation among creatures like us.

That is why the framework calls them moral forces. Moral judgment, praise, blame, shame, punishment, and moral narrative are not outside physics. They are causal mechanisms inside physics. They shape behavior, coordinate groups, protect the vulnerable, and prevent recurrence. DMF does not abolish moral language. It tries to pull morality down out of myth and place it where it actually operates: inside deterministic interactions among valuers.

WHY IT MATTERS

DMF changes the meaning of “desert.” Under the familiar retributive picture, punishment is justified because the person could have done otherwise under the exact same conditions, and they chose evil anyway. DMF says that kind of desert is incoherent in a deterministic world. But it does not follow that action has no consequences, or that society cannot respond. What changes is the justification. Justice becomes protection, deterrence, rehabilitation, and prevention rather than metaphysical payback.

That shift matters because the retributive posture is not neutral. It can sanctify cruelty by giving suffering a moral sheen. If someone “deserves” pain for its own sake, then inflicting pain starts to look virtuous. DMF tries to cut that justification off at the root. Once you see harmful behavior as caused, the rational ethical question becomes: what interventions actually reduce harm and improve lives for beings like us?

DMF also reframes the is-ought problem into a usable tool instead of a dead end. You cannot derive an “ought” from pure description alone. But you can derive an “ought” once values are included, because valuing is part of what minds are. In other words, “ought” is not a mysterious extra ingredient sprinkled onto facts. “Ought” is what an agent’s value structure selects when combined with the descriptive reality of the situation.

DMF also aims to be more modest than traditional ethical systems by refusing to rest on what the chapter frames as unprovable starting points. It does not require contra-causal free will to make responsibility “real.” It does not require intrinsic values floating in the universe. It does not require a god-command to get morality off the ground. It tries to always point to causal reasons and consequences, and when a rule conflicts with reality, it sides with reality instead of clinging to the rule.

This also clarifies religious morality without needing to mock it. DMF can treat religious adherence as deterministic behavior shaped by upbringing, fear, hope, community, and psychological propensity, while still insisting that no rule is above evaluation by consequences and causal reality. If a purported command produces predictable harm, DMF’s ethic is to judge it by its effects rather than sheltering it behind sanctity.

Finally, DMF changes how moral dilemmas feel, not only how they are argued. The chapter uses the Trolley Problem to show how determinism can strip away the cloud of guilt and “moral stain” that often distorts analysis. Instead of framing the lever-puller as a freely choosing murderer, DMF frames the decision-maker as an instrument of causality forced into a tragic tradeoff. That does not make the situation easy, but it can make it clearer: the real question becomes which outcome you can live with given the values you actually have.

FORMAL SPINE

DMF has a formal derivation that makes the determinism-to-desert collapse explicit.

It starts by defining a deterministic world as one where the state of the world evolves uniquely from prior state plus laws. It then defines an agent as a subsystem whose actions are fixed by its internal state and the laws of the world. Contra-causal free will is defined as the ability of an agent to choose an action that is not fully determined by its state plus the world’s laws.

From those definitions, the derivation shows that contra-causal free will is not available in a deterministic world. If actions are fixed by state and laws, there is no extra, uncaused “could have done otherwise” fact to appeal to.

Next, the derivation formalizes moral judgment as a function an agent applies to actions, assigning them moral value. The critical move is that in a deterministic world, moral judgments themselves are determined by prior causal conditions, just like the actions they evaluate. The same is done for punishment: punishment is treated as a determined social response shaped by norms and institutions, not a frame-free moral lightning bolt.

Retributive desert is then defined as the claim that an agent deserves punishment solely because they freely chose wrongdoing. Theorem 8.4 makes the dependency explicit: retributive desert requires contra-causal free will. If someone must be punishable “because they deserve it,” then they must have been able to do otherwise under the same causal conditions. But that “could have done otherwise” is exactly what contra-causal free will asserts.

The appendix also introduces stance-free moral properties: moral properties that would hold independent of any attitudes or valuers. Theorem 8.5 packages the endpoint: if retributive desert requires both contra-causal free will and stance-free moral properties, and a deterministic world lacks contra-causal free will (and the wider system rejects stance-free moral properties via the Contingency Guillotine), then stance-free moral desert is eliminated. In a deterministic world, retributive moral desert becomes incoherent.

Importantly, the derivation does not end with “no responsibility.” Corollary 8.11 reframes responsibility as causal locus. You remain the locus where certain causal chains run through. You are still a system that can be influenced, restrained, educated, rehabilitated, deterred, and held to account in forward-looking ways. What disappears is the metaphysical claim that you are an ultimate origin that deserves suffering as payment.

The system also formalizes the is-ought representation inside this framework. It defines an “is” state for an agent at a time as the full descriptive state, then introduces a value function over outcomes, and a rational policy that maps descriptive state plus values to an action. From those, it defines an “ought” in terms of what the policy selects given the descriptive state plus the value function. Theorem 8.6 states the payoff directly: “ought” does not come from “is” alone, but “ought” follows deterministically from “is” plus values. The is-ought gap is therefore a missing-value gap, not an argument that normativity is impossible.

HOW IT WORKS

DMF is easiest to understand as a sequence of locks clicking into place.

First, accept the determinism posture of Persistent Present Determinism (see Term 9). If you could rewind to the same conditions, the same “choice” occurs again. That is what determinism means here.

Second, accept the Contingency Guillotine (see Term 12). Moral predicates do not survive the removal of minds. “Wrong” and “good” are not properties of rocks and stars in the stance-free way moral realism wants. Moral language is anchored in valuers.

Third, accept that valuers are physical, finite systems. That means they are caused systems. The same causal story that explains hunger and fear explains empathy and cruelty. The same causal story that explains habit explains conscience.

Once you have those three, the retributive model collapses on its own. If there is no stance-free moral fact, and no contra-causal free will, then “desert” cannot do the job people want it to do. What remains is moral practice as causal engineering: shaping agents and environments so that fewer horrific things happen and more stable flourishing happens for beings like us.

This is also why DMF thinks moral rules are not “sacred” in the sense of being above evaluation. Even if a rule has tradition behind it, or a religious halo around it, DMF treats the rule as a causal tool. If it causes predictable suffering, it is a bad tool. If it reduces harm and increases stability for valuers like us, it is a better tool. Reality is the constraint; rules are the adjustable layer.

And this is how DMF handles moral dilemmas. The chapter’s trolley example is not mainly about scoring points between deontology and utilitarianism. It’s about stripping away moral theater and asking what is actually happening. In determinism, you are not a freely choosing villain if you act; you are a causal node inside a causal disaster trying to minimize the damage given your values. That framing reduces the metaphysical guilt cloud and forces the discussion into consequences, constraints, and what you actually care about.

COMMON OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES

Objection: “If I can’t do otherwise, how can I be expected to be better?”
Reply: DMF does not say “you can’t change.” It says change is causal. Expectation, education, consequence, therapy, self-reflection, and social feedback are causes. Moral discourse is part of how we become causes that shape the next moment.

Objection: “Without objective morality, anything goes.”
Reply: The Contingency Guillotine already blocks stance-free morality. DMF adds that moral norms arise because they function for valuers like us. “Anything goes” would only follow if no one cared about suffering, trust, safety, or love. But those cares are exactly what real moral landscapes are made of.

Objection: “This removes responsibility and lets criminals off the hook.”
Reply: DMF rejects retributive desert, not consequence or protection. You can still restrain dangerous people, deter harm, require restitution, and build systems that prevent recurrence. The justification becomes forward-looking and harm-reducing, not vengeance disguised as justice.

Objection: “Retribution is obviously right. People deserve what they get.”
Reply: DMF treats that impulse as one of the moral forces itself. It is real psychological data, but it is not a metaphysical oracle. The claim is that building justice on that impulse produces cruelty. Better justice uses the impulse as something to understand and manage under the goals of safety, rehabilitation, and reduced harm.

Objection: “You can’t bridge is and ought.”
Reply: DMF agrees that you cannot get an ought from pure description alone. The formal result is that once values are included, ought follows deterministically. The gap is not between facts and norms as alien categories. The gap is between facts without any value premise, and facts plus a value structure.

HOW TO USE IT IN DEBATE

If someone insists on retributive punishment, DMF gives you a clean pressure question: what makes desert true? If they say “because they freely chose it,” DMF forces precision. Do they mean the person could have done otherwise under the same causal conditions? If yes, they are defending contra-causal free will. If no, retribution loses its metaphysical grounding and becomes a preference for payback.

If someone says determinism makes morality meaningless, DMF flips the point. Under DMF, morality becomes more practical, not less. Moral norms are causal tools. Tools do not stop working because they have causes. They work because they cause things.

If someone argues that “objective morality” is necessary for ethics, DMF gives you a two-step reply. First, Contingency Guillotine: no morality without minds. Second, DMF: once you have minds, moral structure emerges as a deterministic interaction among valuers, and moral theory becomes the study of how to shape behavior to reduce suffering and improve lives.

If someone tries to weaponize “no free will” into nihilism, DMF gives a counter: even nihilism, even apathy, even cruelty, are deterministic moral forces. The question is not whether values exist as causeless commandments. The question is which values exist, how they formed, and what causal strategies best realize them without producing unnecessary harm.

CONNECTIONS TO OTHER PAGES

Connects backward to: Persistent Present Determinism (see Term 9). DMF uses determinism to deny contra-causal free will as the foundation for retributive desert.

Connects backward to: Spectrum of Consciousness (see Term 10). DMF assumes a world populated by minds and valuers on a spectrum, and treats moral concern as arising from how those systems can suffer, flourish, and interact.

Connects backward to: Contingency Guillotine (see Term 12). CG removes stance-free morality; DMF picks up from there and treats moral life as an emergent, deterministic interaction among valuers rather than an external law.

Connects forward to: Finite Mind, Finite God (see Term 53). DMF pressures any theology or metaphysics that uses moral desert, blame, or “ultimate guilt” as if they were stance-free facts, because moral judgment still arrives through finite, causal minds.

TERMINOLOGY INDEX FOR THIS PAGE

Term 9: Persistent Present Determinism (PPD)
Term 10: Spectrum of Consciousness (SOC)
Term 12: Contingency Guillotine (CG)
Term 13: Deterministic Moral Forces (DMF)
Term 53: Finite Mind, Finite God (FMFG)