Excellent video. While I disagree with much of Stallman’s beliefs, he raises interesting points and is often misunderstood. People mistakenly think that Stallman expects other people to match his own standards when following the philosophy of free/libre software. Like a black and white dichotomy. You either go full libre or you fail. However, Stallman simply wants us to do our best to follow his philosophy. There _is_ nuance, such as his belief that people can do better than they claim they can-but he acknowledges that not everyone can meet his own personal standards. Yet every victory towards free/libre software is important. An Apple user switching from Safari to Firefox, for example, is a step in the right direction. From there, hopefully, more steps are taken (less JavaScript, more GNU tools, etc.) Stallman simply sets the bar very high, as a demonstration of what’s possible.
You have stumbled upon metaethics; and specifically the question of objective moral values -- if there is such a thing? For a christian the grounds for something being good is that it is something which god approves of (such as slavery). So is it good because god approves of it or does god approve of it because it is good? In other words, is the grounding for goodness god's arbitrary opinion or is god the ultimate arbiter of goodness, which would make it the case that the grounding for goodness could be discovered by anyone, i.e. there is a property which makes something good and could therefore be discovered. Either you admit that what is moral is merely gods opinion, or that there is an objective property which "makes" something good/bad, of which god is just better at identifying, which would mean that you are now faced with the same problem that the "materialists" are faced with. A utilitarian could answer that that which maximizes total utility is good etc.
1:051:20 That will be right for some, but as someone who doesn’t think that there is an objective morality, I see freedom as something good because I like freedom. Somebody else might have a different opinion and because morality is subjective they aren’t objectively less or more right. They just are less right to me because I judge them by my own subjective standards just like they have their own view of what is right or wrong. That subjective morality will obviously be heavily influenced by the society/culture I grew up in, but nonetheless I have my own. Free software advocates argument with freedom because in their moral compass freedom is something good and they know that others think similarly. Maybe the opinion of society at large changes, but that doesn’t mean that the moral compass of the individual FOSS advocate changes. „Society worshippers“ wouldn’t really be FOSS advocates, because if they only copy the opinion of the general public (which right now doesn’t see proprietary software as something bad) they wouldn’t be advocating for free software in the first place, since they wouldn’t see it as morally superior either.
I don't particularly like the term 'free software' because everyone tends to have their own interpretation of what 'freedom' entails and people often overemphasize a perceived absence of freedom. I believe the crucial aspect of free software lies in the minimal barriers to collaboration. The key is to form a program in a manner that maximizes its utility for as many individuals as possible. Through the collaborative process, a 'society of developers' emerges, collectively working towards a common societal benefit. The inherent freedom to use and modify free software is a consequence of making it as easy as possible for people to collaborate on it.
I don't think that you understand moral relativism as a form of moral antirealism. We don't claim that society's general moral beliefs are true or valid, we believe that there is nothing such as valid or true moral propositions at all. Morality exists as long as there is a power enforcing it, and thus is shaped by society (and more generally, the Superstructure, the ideological basis of a society). I may not agree with moral beliefs of a society supporting cannibalism, that doesn't make it immoral. Best one can do is to try to somehow impose his moral beliefs on society, through arguments or force (this force could be economical influence, organizing with like-minded people, support from moral authorities like churches for conservatives and civil society for liberals etc.), and hope it convinces society to tolerate or at best adopt and enforce them (although as a historical materialist I also acknowledge that morals depend more on conditions than conscious thought). As for what I mean when I make the propositions such as "Freedom is good", I simply state my emotions, not a form of metaphysical or divine truth. I may back it up with pragmatic evidence (for example, benefits of free software or opposition to corporate control) and try to convince people to support my resolution, that requires no appeal to a divine force. And finally, moral relativism is not the sole secular system of ethics. Among both continental and analytical philosophers, there are many different forms of ethical systems, commonly involving some kind of Kantian framework.
Let's say you have ultimate freedom to do whatever you want, let's say you have some magic box which gives you unlimited money and you are not subjected to any laws. I think everyone will agree that only a person of the righteousness of Jesus himself will be able to withstand such unlimited freedom without turning into an animal or purely instinctual creature. So if unlimited freedom is not something which will produce benifit to individual or society it means freedom should be limited after certain point, the tricky part is to know where it should be limited and where it shouldn't. In any case, when it comes to software we are not talking about social freedoms that we have in real world right now and which are sometimes tricky to manage or combine with other freedoms of different people, right now in software world we are basically living in 18th century America where slavery is allowed. So FSF's freedom is freedom from slavery, not freedom to do whatever you want or take control of everything with your ideology. In software world - bad freedom would be to use software to create damaging deep fakes, but freedom to not be a slave of a corporation is not a bad freedom, I don't even know how you can argue against such freedom.
Excellent video. While I disagree with much of Stallman’s beliefs, he raises interesting points and is often misunderstood. People mistakenly think that Stallman expects other people to match his own standards when following the philosophy of free/libre software. Like a black and white dichotomy. You either go full libre or you fail.
However, Stallman simply wants us to do our best to follow his philosophy. There _is_ nuance, such as his belief that people can do better than they claim they can-but he acknowledges that not everyone can meet his own personal standards. Yet every victory towards free/libre software is important. An Apple user switching from Safari to Firefox, for example, is a step in the right direction. From there, hopefully, more steps are taken (less JavaScript, more GNU tools, etc.)
Stallman simply sets the bar very high, as a demonstration of what’s possible.
You have stumbled upon metaethics; and specifically the question of objective moral values -- if there is such a thing? For a christian the grounds for something being good is that it is something which god approves of (such as slavery). So is it good because god approves of it or does god approve of it because it is good? In other words, is the grounding for goodness god's arbitrary opinion or is god the ultimate arbiter of goodness, which would make it the case that the grounding for goodness could be discovered by anyone, i.e. there is a property which makes something good and could therefore be discovered. Either you admit that what is moral is merely gods opinion, or that there is an objective property which "makes" something good/bad, of which god is just better at identifying, which would mean that you are now faced with the same problem that the "materialists" are faced with.
A utilitarian could answer that that which maximizes total utility is good etc.
1:05 1:20 That will be right for some, but as someone who doesn’t think that there is an objective morality, I see freedom as something good because I like freedom. Somebody else might have a different opinion and because morality is subjective they aren’t objectively less or more right. They just are less right to me because I judge them by my own subjective standards just like they have their own view of what is right or wrong. That subjective morality will obviously be heavily influenced by the society/culture I grew up in, but nonetheless I have my own. Free software advocates argument with freedom because in their moral compass freedom is something good and they know that others think similarly. Maybe the opinion of society at large changes, but that doesn’t mean that the moral compass of the individual FOSS advocate changes. „Society worshippers“ wouldn’t really be FOSS advocates, because if they only copy the opinion of the general public (which right now doesn’t see proprietary software as something bad) they wouldn’t be advocating for free software in the first place, since they wouldn’t see it as morally superior either.
I don't particularly like the term 'free software' because everyone tends to have their own interpretation of what 'freedom' entails and people often overemphasize a perceived absence of freedom. I believe the crucial aspect of free software lies in the minimal barriers to collaboration. The key is to form a program in a manner that maximizes its utility for as many individuals as possible. Through the collaborative process, a 'society of developers' emerges, collectively working towards a common societal benefit. The inherent freedom to use and modify free software is a consequence of making it as easy as possible for people to collaborate on it.
I don't think that you understand moral relativism as a form of moral antirealism. We don't claim that society's general moral beliefs are true or valid, we believe that there is nothing such as valid or true moral propositions at all. Morality exists as long as there is a power enforcing it, and thus is shaped by society (and more generally, the Superstructure, the ideological basis of a society). I may not agree with moral beliefs of a society supporting cannibalism, that doesn't make it immoral. Best one can do is to try to somehow impose his moral beliefs on society, through arguments or force (this force could be economical influence, organizing with like-minded people, support from moral authorities like churches for conservatives and civil society for liberals etc.), and hope it convinces society to tolerate or at best adopt and enforce them (although as a historical materialist I also acknowledge that morals depend more on conditions than conscious thought). As for what I mean when I make the propositions such as "Freedom is good", I simply state my emotions, not a form of metaphysical or divine truth. I may back it up with pragmatic evidence (for example, benefits of free software or opposition to corporate control) and try to convince people to support my resolution, that requires no appeal to a divine force. And finally, moral relativism is not the sole secular system of ethics. Among both continental and analytical philosophers, there are many different forms of ethical systems, commonly involving some kind of Kantian framework.
Let's say you have ultimate freedom to do whatever you want, let's say you have some magic box which gives you unlimited money and you are not subjected to any laws. I think everyone will agree that only a person of the righteousness of Jesus himself will be able to withstand such unlimited freedom without turning into an animal or purely instinctual creature.
So if unlimited freedom is not something which will produce benifit to individual or society it means freedom should be limited after certain point, the tricky part is to know where it should be limited and where it shouldn't.
In any case, when it comes to software we are not talking about social freedoms that we have in real world right now and which are sometimes tricky to manage or combine with other freedoms of different people, right now in software world we are basically living in 18th century America where slavery is allowed. So FSF's freedom is freedom from slavery, not freedom to do whatever you want or take control of everything with your ideology. In software world - bad freedom would be to use software to create damaging deep fakes, but freedom to not be a slave of a corporation is not a bad freedom, I don't even know how you can argue against such freedom.