Do you believe in the idea that no action is either praise-worthy or blame-
worthy? Do you feel that that this is a plausible argument being made, or
that it does not work? Are our actions really not of our own, and only
circumstances of our surround area and our surrounding situation? Why or why not?
I took a course on this. I’m trying to remember why I thought what I thought, but the basic conclusion was that all arguments that make that claim rely on the idea the responsibility is absolute. If you look at responsibility is something you can have in degrees, then the situtaion can reduce your responsibility but rarely eliminate it completly.
I think I set up criterion based on the different theorist. But what it basicly comes down to, is the more rational thought you put into an action the more responsable you have for it. And anybody aware of right and wrong is at least slightly responsable for most of there actions.
This is irregardless of determinism, because there can be such a thing as a bad robot. :-p
Is it? Or perhaps there are no bad robots BUT only bad robot makers.
And bad robot makers are in turn bad because they had bad teachers, and there are bad teachers because …
Well, if the robot is a completely determined being, and happens to be quite evil, then what is there redimable in that robot? Why should we care about the casual explination of what made the robot evil?
And how would free-will help the robot? If the robot had a random number chip instialled, and thats the reason why he choose the bad actions, would that somehow make him more responsable?
We should IF to be responsible means that you are a causal factor to your actions, the degree of responsibility being the degree of contribution of you as the causal factor. So if is nothing you do can be attributed to any degree of your decision or choice or exercise of your own free will then you cannot be responsible.
So the robot with the bad random chip didnt will or decide to have such a chip in the first place, and thus cannot be responsible for the effects that this chip causes.
Of course we should not care if your notion of responsibility is a different one.
From my vantage point, things are praiseworthy and blameworthy, because I’m not an objective judger. I don’t know what absolute right or wrong is.
I think if I did know, though, any action other than that knowledge could not be called praiseworthy or blameworthy.
I advise you all to stop praising and blaming.
And if you find yourselves on the receiving end of either praise or blame then act like stones.
Otherwise you will act like fools, full of shit one moment, dejected the next.
I have often reflected along these lines. If you accept free will, you almost have to accept responsibility. Actions are difficult to praise or blame from outside because the only person who knows all of the circumstances is the moral agent. The same action may be praiseworthy in one set of circumstances, yet blameworthy in another (consequentialism). In addition some actions exist within a specific motivational paradigm for that individual, and some motivations may be more base and narrow than others (the deontological).