A Formal Sociologic Study of Free Will

TL;DR

This paper develops a formal mathematical framework to analyze different types of societies with varying notions of free will, including selfish, altruistic, and reciprocal societies, through the concept of everlasting societies.

Contribution

It introduces the novel concept of everlasting societies and classifies their possible histories based on free will and ethical constraints, blending sociology with formal logic.

Findings

Defined three types of histories: primitive, good, and golden.

Formalized free will and societal evolution using mathematical logic.

Explored how ethical principles influence societal development.

Abstract

We make a formal sociologic study of the concept of free will. By using the language of mathematics and logic, we define what we call everlasting societies. Everlasting societies never age: persons never age, and the goods of the society are indestructible. The infinite history of an everlasting society unfolds by following deterministic and probabilistic laws that do their best to satisfy the free will of all the persons of the society. We define three possible kinds of histories for everlasting societies: primitive histories, good histories, and golden histories. In primitive histories, persons are inherently selfish, and they use their free will to obtain the personal ownerships of all the goods of the society. In good histories, persons are inherently good, and they use their free will to distribute the goods of the society. In good histories, a person is not only able to desire the personal ownership of goods, but is also able to desire that a good be owned by another person. In golden histories, free will is bound by the ethic of reciprocity, which states that "you should wish upon others as you would like others to wish upon yourself". In golden societies, the ethic of reciprocity becomes a law that partially binds free will, and that must be abided at all times. In other words, the verb "should" becomes the verb "must".