Moral responsibility is another construct and illusion.
It’s all contradictive hypocritical bullshit. Society legitimizes some killings while forbidding others.
Justification and legitimization are just parlor tricks of authority used on a mentally weak obedient population.
And once again people ignore environmental determinism. Many killers will say they were forced into their lifestyle environmentally.
One thing, which this “It was a free choice”, or his free will does, it hides the authoritarian aspect of society behind a veil of ‘he didn’t have to do it’, it’s designed to make it look like not anyone is being rejected by society, no, the perpetrator could have chosen otherwise.
I say, no, he couldn’t have chosen otherwise.
But here is where I am departing from The Jokers views, as I understand them - This is not a plea against authority in society. This is showing that authority is hidden in society and that it doesn’t have to stay hidden. I favour openly displayed authority.
Authority can’t be anything other than what it is. It has no more choice than the perpetrator.
As social environment changes, so do the incentives for the people within it change and so does their behaviour.
No free will kind of a choice required.
I don’t see how forced to choose between fewer things than what may have been possible without “environmental determinism” means there’s no choice at all.
One thing I have noted about hard determinists is that this is a black and white issue to them. No reason or logic matters. Not sure why though, its interesting. Then things usually get emotional.
What I get out of your posts is the suggestion that although the perpetrator has no choice, somehow the justice system has a choice in how it responds. That’s simply not the case. The justice system is as much a product of the environment as the perpetrator. It can’t be accountable in the same degree that the perpetrator is not accountable.
When I say that there is no free will then that doesn’t mean that there are no incentives, so punishment still works and changes people’s behaviour, their choices if one wants to describe it it in such discrete events.
Another argument people make is in the line of ‘Why argue for or about anything’, if it’s all determined anyway? That arguing and discourse overall does influence the social environment and affect people’s behaviour. The sprouting of a concept of free will has influenced how people think and thus modified their behaviour in certain ways. In short, no free will doesn’t mean that we don’t think or argue anymore.
The justice system and society overall changes all the time, no free will required for that either.
The arguing is part of what and how things play out.
Compatibilism tries to save free will which is essentially based on the idea of a free and distinct soul which is unaffected and free to be its own point of origin, its own god.
No Free will doesn’t make any sense to me still.
Compatibilism is not based on the idea of a free and distinct soul which is unaffected and free to be its own point of origin. I just explained how free will is in compatibilism in the OP, and it wasn’t that. Free will and determinism work hand in hand in the compatibilistic view, and free will is not absolutely free (nor do I think it ever was and if so, that is stupid) Nor was free will “unaffected” (nor do I think it ever was and if so, that is stupid)
The discussion about Free Will has never been about affecting reality directly, not about something like ‘magical thinking’.
What you describe in your first post and call Compatibilism is the stance of Free Will and not something in the middle between the deterministic and the free will position.
Look, reality is what it is.
If you think there is a Free Will then this thinking affects your consciousness, your thinking in a certain way which is going in turn to affect your life in certain ways.
If you think there is no Free Will then it will also affect your thinking and in turn how you live your life.
I think I’ve already mentioned this example here once in some thread but this is how believing in Free Will has affected the the Evangelical Christians in America when confronted with a skilful attack on their homosexuality stance -
They were told that homosexuals are born homosexuals and that it’s not a choice, so it’s not about Free Will. Those Evangelicals who accepted the concept of Free Will as true were then pushed into accepting homosexuality as morally good behaviour because if they are born that way then it’s not their moral failing to make a good choice and thus homosexuality was accepted as morally good.
Somebody should have told them that murderers are also born with their taste for blood and their willingness to follow through at incentives which would not make the average Joe into a murderer. So we must then accept murderers also as morally good because it’s not about their Free Will.
I get that you cannot think outside the Free Will conception and that’s fine, it’s likely not going to change because it’s quite a radical change for the mind and I don’t say that flippantly. And you know, if it is working out for you then you probably shouldn’t change it, I guess.
But don’t tell me this is ‘Compatibilism’, it’s basic Free Will that you are arguing for.
Look, reality is what it is.
If you think there is a Free Will then this thinking affects your consciousness, your thinking in a certain way which is going in turn to affect your life in certain ways.
If you think there is no Free Will then it will also affect your thinking and in turn how you live your life.
I think I’ve already mentioned this example here once in some thread but this is how believing in Free Will has affected the the Evangelical Christians in America when confronted with a skilful attack on their homosexuality stance -
They were told that homosexuals are born homosexuals and that it’s not a choice, so it’s not about Free Will. Those Evangelicals who accepted the concept of Free Will as true were then pushed into accepting homosexuality as morally good behaviour because if they are born that way then it’s not their moral failing to make a good choice and thus homosexuality was accepted as morally good.
Somebody should have told them that murderers are also born with their taste for blood and their willingness to follow through at incentives which would not make the average Joe into a murderer. So we must then accept murderers also as morally good because it’s not about their Free Will.
I get that you cannot think outside the Free Will conception and that’s fine, it’s likely not going to change because it’s quite a radical change for the mind and I don’t say that flippantly. And you know, if it is working out for you then you probably shouldn’t change it, I guess.
But don’t tell me this is ‘Compatibilism’, it’s basic Free Will that you are arguing for.
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How isn’t it compatibilism? It allows for free will and determinism and is the reason explaining why compatibilism is reasonable. The flow of determinism is in tact through the choice of the agent. Again, if you think free will must be absolutely free from genetics/environment somehow, then I do say you are arguing against a magical free will. Your allusion to how some people are born with a thirst for blood, well, doesn’t really conflict with what I say. Values are not necessarily part of our free will. We can’t just choose to value things outside of what our biological make up requires, or what we have necessarily ingrained in us from our environment, but that doesn’t mean free will is non existent in my eyes and I would say that if it does, then you are arguing against a straw man version of free will.
Authority figure needs to step out of the shadows. Stop controlling the Borg. This world is a hot, crazy mess, but when I start feeling like the sanest crazy then someone’s gonna have to make their move. I loathe Mexican stand-offs. Pointless. God…Devil. Step to the plate please, so I can slap you both silly.
I’m saying that what you describe as Compatibilism has been the position of the free-will advocates all along historically. Compatibilism is just a new name to make it look like it’s something new and distinct from this magical-thinking kind of free-will which you describe, which was never the argument historically.
The name compatibilism is just a new package for the original views to make them seem more reasonable, more ‘taking ideas from both sides’.
And I’m saying the content is what free-will proponents have been saying all along, the views haven’t changed.
I’m gonna give another example of Free-Will philosophy implicitly in action in socio-political thinking -
“If we gonna have Mexicans flow over the border then nothing’s gonna change for the US. In a free country they will be free to use their free-will and make good choices and everything’s gonna work out and if it doesn’t then the reason was that the country wasn’t free enough.”
Wrong… with sufficient Mexicans in a region, the region gonna resemble more and more the state found in Mexico and it’s gonna be more and more Marxist. (2 of the 3 main parties in Mexico are openly Marxist and members of the socialist league.)
Another one -
“The poor are poor because they made bad choices. (implying that they could have made other choices.)”
They are poor because them and the society they are part of lead eventually to them being poor and them being poor has consequences for the society in turn as well in form of rising crime and so on. Giving them handouts to enable them to make good choices, good investments and so on is in most cases not going to change their plight, it’s not gonna work.
The we make ‘free’ choices philosophy is BS. Doesn’t work in the real world, neither descriptive nor prescriptive.
As long as anyone believes that there is a “beginning” which acts as a “first cause”, then anything other than hard determinism is non sensible. The only way around this is believing in “God”, because one can therefore bypass reason through the notion that “God works in mysterious ways” and “God can make the impossible possible”. Your typical materialist, on the other hand, has no excuse (except for cowardice) to betray hard determinism.
In reality, no such 1st cause exists. It is a myth. The ultimate ground of being does not lie in a distant past, but in a dimension within this moment. The moment, purified of all forms, is this “1st cause”, except it is not a “first” cause at all, but an ever existing dimension of causation. One who exists in perfect harmony with this moment has access to the causal dimension. In other words, causality is not a matter of something existing in the past, but of ones relationship with the moment. An awareness free of time is absolutely free, and all things spring forth from that place. Emptiness gives rise to form always and forever. When we settle down in primal simplicity, in primal emptiness, we are free. And the measure of our freedom or lack thereof is the measure of how intimate we are or are not with this everlasting dimension that we call “now”.
So, again, free will is not “mysterious”. It is how we react to cause and as such create effect, as such, is deterministic free will.
Holy shit!
Cause and effect just being a myth!
You can choose to step outside of cause and effect!
You are poor? It’s just a choice man, think positive! Choose to be rich, if you want to, or even better choose to not give a shit about anything, that’s your highest calling man! YOLO!
So cause and effect is not a myth in compatibilism, nobody can “choose to step outside cause and effect”. Also, people just can’t “choose” to be rich, its not a matter of “will” or “free will”. You can choose to take steps to be rich, they may work or may not, but “free will” does override cause and effect. If you want to be rich and you make a choice to play the lottery or go get an education, that doesn’t mean you have chosen to be rich. There are steps to take, your choices will fail because there simply is not a way to just become rich because you “choose to”.
As I’ve said before, “free will” is not omnipotent, never was. You can’t just choose to be rich, then when you’re not rich, blame it on a lack of free will. That’s magical. Hard determinists seem to have the strawman argument against whatever version of free will they assume down pat, but have no inkling how to handle a reasonable free will, in which we do make choices, in which we do effect, and cause. If you choose to kill someone, you caused the effect of the death of that person. Yes, free will indeed. Yes, cause and effect, indeed.
So again, we have a hard determinist not understanding compatibilism or the free will argument therein.
I know you didn’t claim that.
ATW was telling me about the false myth of cause and effect.