thoughts on determinism

[iambiguous]

Reconciling Determinism and Free Will: A Compatibilist Perspective
Innocent Ociti

In terms of their implications for ethics and moral responsibility, libertarianism and compatibilism offer different perspectives. Libertarianism places a strong emphasis on individual responsibility and the idea that we are responsible for our actions because we freely choose them. Compatibilism, on the other hand, places a greater emphasis on the idea that we are responsible for our actions because they are in line with our desires and motivations, even if those desires and motivations are themselves determined by prior causes.

On the other “other hand”, however, compatibilism still makes absolutely no sense to me. Well, other than because my brain, wholly in sync with the laws of matter, compels me to be flummoxed when contemplating it only as [up until now] I only ever could have been.

Now, the libertarians may well be right here. But they are no less just like all the rest of us in being unable to explain “scientifically” or “philosophically” [other than up in the intellectual clouds] how, when, biologically, life began to evolve here on planet Earth, it “somehow” evolved into autonomous human beings. It just…happened.

And most libertarians that I have met simply shrug off the points I raise regarding the role that dasein plays in predisposing mere mortals in a No God world to embrace particular sets of political prejudices. Biases rooted existentially in particular historical, cultural and personal interactions.

Overall, while libertarianism and compatibilism offer different perspectives on free will and determinism, they both provide frameworks for thinking about the relationship between our actions and our moral responsibility. The specific approach that is taken will depend on a range of factors, including one’s philosophical beliefs, the nature of the ethical dilemma, and the cultural context.

Yes, this and the arguments that I note in the OPs here:

ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=176529
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=194382
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=185296

Finally, back to this…

“Compatibilism, on the other hand, places a greater emphasis on the idea that we are responsible for our actions because they are in line with our desires and motivations, even if those desires and motivations are themselves determined by prior causes.”

Those “internal” – intuitive – factors that come into play for human beings that “deep down inside” convince them [including me] that they have free will. Even though these desires and motivations are themselves determined by prior causes?

[iambiguous]

Is Free Will Necessary For Moral Responsibility?
A case for rethinking their relationship
Carrie Figdor and Mark Phelan

Introduction: Freedom and Moral Responsibility

How are free will and moral responsibility related? As Kadri Vihvelin writes, within the philosophical literature on moral responsibility ‘it is…widely agreed that the existence of free will is a necessary condition of the existence of moral responsibility.’

How “widely agreed” in the philosophical community? For some years now I have been trying to bump into an argument able to convince me that “somehow” a wholly determined universe and moral responsibility are compatible. And here I assume further that compatibilists themselves are no less wholly compelled to think what they do about it. So, it’s ever and always back to the profound mystery embedded in biological life evolving into self-conscious human beings here on planet Earth.

Michael McKenna seconds Vihvelin’s summary:

“Free will is understood as a necessary condition of moral responsibility since it would seem unreasonable to say of a person that she deserves blame and punishment for her conduct if it turned out that she was not at any point in time in control of it.”

There you go!

What do I keep missing here when the compatibilists get around to Mary and Mike?

Peter Van Inwagen also prominently defends this position, writing that:

“…without free will there is no moral responsibility: if moral responsibility exists, then someone is morally responsible for something he has done or for something he has left undone; to be morally responsible for some act or failure to act is at least to be able to have acted otherwise, whatever else it may involve; to be able to have acted otherwise is to have free will. Therefore, if moral responsibility exists, someone has free will. Therefore, if no one has free will, moral responsibility does not exist.”

Okay, Mr. Compatibilist, how is this applicable or not applicable to Mary and Mike? And, in regard to the human brain, how is what they did [abort/rape] not in turn interchangeable with how the rest of us react to what they did? Autonomically, wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

[iambiguous]

Is Free Will Necessary For Moral Responsibility?
A case for rethinking their relationship
Carrie Figdor and Mark Phelan

Finally, in Freedom and Resentment, P. F. Strawson acknowledges widespread agreement over this view [above]. He distinguishes pessimists and optimists regarding the justifiability of practices of punishment… under the assumption that determinism is true: pessimists think such practices would not be justified, optimists think they would. But he also notes that both sides agree that freedom is necessary for moral responsibility even though they differ on what ‘freedom’ means.

Then the part [of course] where I note the predicament all of us face here. Including the authors. Strawson distinguishes optimists from pessimists as he does. But how on Earth would he go about determining if this distinction itself was something he was able make autonomously? Instead, if this distinction is no less intertwined with our own distinctions no less intertwined in brain matter that compels all of us to distinguish only as we ever could in the only possible material reality.

Same thing regarding what we come to think that freedom means. Some here assume they thought this up of their own volition. It means only what it does to them because they introspect autonomously. Others assume that, on the contrary, we reward or punish behaviors as we do because we were never able not to. Justification is moot to the laws of nature.

Unless, perhaps, it’s not? Back to what may well be the profoundest mystery of them all: The possibility of teleology in a No God world.

What do the pantheists/Spinozans have to say about that: quora.com/Is-there-such-a-t … -pantheism

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Libertarianism, Determinism & Compatibilism

Libertarianism about free will is the view that we do have the power to make genuine choices and could have done otherwise than what we did. It is the view that free will exists.

Just out of curiosity, any libertarians/advocates of free will here who do believe they are able to actually demonstrate that we have autonomy. Or, instead, are you willing/able only to take a leap of faith to the “belief” “in your head” that “somehow” when matter evolved into biological life here on Earth and became us we “just did” acquire it.

Sartre is a libertarian. Sartre claimed that there is no objective purpose, nor anything else determines our actions because “existence precedes essence”, meaning humans exist before they have a defined purpose and so have to subjectively define their purpose for themselves. This suggests that they have the free will to decide their purpose.

Sartre, no doubt, for some, offers up the worst of all possible worlds: “somehow” we did acquire free will. But what on Earth and for all practical purposes does this mean if any behaviors that we do choose are no more essentially rational and purposeful than any other behaviors? Then, in the is/ought world, it’s just a matter of how more or less “fractured and fragmented” you become.

Sartre’s argument is a psychological one, that people cling to fabricated notions of objective purpose like religion or Aristotle’s ‘final cause/telos’ because they are afraid of not having a purpose, more specifically they are scared of the intensity of the freedom that comes from having to choose their own purpose.

Here, however, we are back to engaging human psychology in order to probe the extent to which human psychology itself is or is not autonomous. Matter having evolved into brains actually able to ponder what that means.

And whether one way or another it can do this because it freely opted to choose to.

Sartre thought that this sense of “radical freedom” led to feelings of abandonment (by God/objective reality), anguish (over the weight of being completely responsible for your actions) and despair (over our inability to act exactly as we’d like due to the constraints of the world). It’s much easier to believe that we don’t have free will than face that existential angst.

Also, I suspect, if we did “somehow” acquire free will, it’s much easier to assume that there is but One True Path to understanding the world around us.

Fortunately, there are lots and lots of paths…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … traditions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p … ideologies
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s … philosophy

…to choose from.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Herd psychology is the first to deny and denounce free-will, desiring to sacrifice whatever small degree of independence it enjoys in the hope of increasing its survival potentials through its surrender to an external will, whether it be conceptualized as a supernatural being or a collectivization of identity into a uniformity of beings.
Schopenhauer himself could not let go of a super-being, existing outside space/time and causality, replacing it with a more Buddhistic alternative he named ‘will.’

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

As Sartre’s argument is psychological, he does not provide metaphysical grounds for rejecting determinism and so is arguably committing the genetic fallacy.

Go ahead, try to think that through. Isn’t the human brain that thinks up philosophical grounds for things like free will the same human brain that experiences emotional and psychological states that are merely assumed to be autonomous?

What if human psychology is capable only of creating the illusion of free will?

Until we grasp the extent to which human genes themselves are able to create a bona fide autonomy, how would we go about determining what constitutes a genetic fallacy?

Are human genes “somehow” able bring about free will? And, here and now, what is the most comprehensive understanding of how human genes and the human brain are intertwined in the laws of matter?

The genetic fallacy is assuming that the way in which someone comes up with a theory is relevant to whether it is true or false. Just because people have a psychological need to believe in objective purpose, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Did your brain, wholly in sync with your genes, compel you to come up with one set of theoretical assumptions about human psychology and free will rather than another? Okay, beyond a “world of words” how would this be substantiated?

Here, in fact, is the author encompassing how in a world of words, Sartre might defend himself…

Counter-defence: Sartre could respond that this is a misunderstanding of his argument. Sartre’s starting premise is that there is nothing in our experience which suggests we have a telos or are determined. All that we experience is ‘radical freedom’ – a sense that every choice we make is completely up to us because there is nothing in our experience like God or telos which could influence or guide that choice. So Sartre is using an a posteriori approach.

What if, instead, Sartre’s starting premise is one that he was never able of his own free will not to opt for? That if others were only able to understand his argument as they must they were never able not to misunderstand it. Meaning that for all practical purposes understandings and misunderstandings themselves are essentially interchangeable. Just as using an a priori or an a posteriori approach are.

Then straight back up into the clouds…

Belief in the mind being non-physical (dualism). If our choices originate from a non-physical self or soul, then they would be unaffected by the deterministic cause and effect of the physical universe. Descartes’ arguments for the soul. Kant phenomenal vs noumenal realm.

And then the part where many ponder how on Earth an omniscient God can possibly be reconciled with human autonomy itself.

Just one more thing to boggle our own minds going all the way back to, well, we don’t even really know what that is, do we? Just as for most [including me as often as not] we “just know” that we have free will.

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Hard/Philosophical determinism

Barron D’Holbach was one of the first Atheists and observed that if we are not created by God and don’t have a soul, we are just physical things like any other and therefore follow the same laws of cause and effect.

That’s the point I come back to over and again. In fact, many who embrace free will come back to that in turn. The only possible explanation for free will is God. Just as objective morality is derived from God so is autonomy. Or are we to believe that in a No God universe mindless matter just “somehow” became living, biological matter that…became us?

God or No God, however, free will is no less the antinomy today that it was going back to the pre-Socratics.

Every event is caused by previous events, including human action. If we keep tracing the cause of our action back in time, eventually we will get to before we were born, and could ultimately go all the way back to the big bang. We were not responsible for the big bang, nor our birth, but therefore we cannot be responsible for our actions either. So there is no such thing as free will.

Of course, this is just one more “philosophical assessment”. We have no capacity [that I am freely aware of] to grasp if it is true. In other words [and you know what’s coming], cue “the gap” and “Rummy’s Rule”. Them and all of the other Big Questions that some merely believe they know the answers to “in their heads”. God or No God.

John Locke argued against the idea that the feeling of free will is a reason to believe it exists, by showing how it could be an illusion.

Indeed, not unlike the illusion of free will that we experience in dreams. It’s all the brain’s doing. Only in the dream we may as well be wide awake. After all, we don’t think and feel and say and do things in dreams while constantly reminding ourselves that it is “only a dream”.

Locke asked us to imagine a man in a locked room who wakes up, unaware it is locked, and ‘chooses’ to stay in the room. He felt like he made a choice, when actually reality was such that no choice was in fact available to him. Locke argues this could be the case for every human action. We simply are unable to directly perceive all the causes and effects that determined our action, which leaves us with the illusion that we were not determined, when really we were.

On the other hand [unless I am missing Locke’s point], if we do have free will, eventually we discover that the door is locked. Then, of our own volition, we come up with a way to get it open. Breaking it down even. So, my own understanding of the “psychological illusion of free will” revolves more around the assumption that human psychology itself is wholly determined. Meaning both the “external” and the “internal” variables in our lives are manifestations of the only possible reality.

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Quantum mechanics tells us that some things happen without a cause. Therefore determinism seems false.

Actually, there is what science thinks it knows about QM “here and now” and all that there is to know about it…ontologically? And until [if ever] science does get closer and closer to fully grasping it – objectively? – who among us [in the interim] can say for sure how cause and effect are intertwined “for all practical purposes” in the subatomic world? Let alone how it is all intertwined [along with the human condition itself] in…the multiverse?

However, if our actions happen because of random quantum mechanics, that hardly seems a better basis for free will than determinism.

The word “random” here has always been rather problematic to me. It’s like completely out of the blue something “just happens”. Like “random mutations” in the evolution of biological life on Earth. As though the laws of matter have no say here. A genetic mutation itself “just happens”.

Thus, “in the interim” we are often confronted with speculation of this sort…

Honderich responds to this criticism by arguing that the structures of the brain might be large enough that the laws of quantum mechanics (which only applies to the very small atomic level) might not actually apply to them nor their function. If this is the case, while determinism might not be true at the Quantum level, it could still be true at the macro level.

What might be and what is? You tell me.

And what is “the case” insofar as morality itself goes? Even if the human brain “somehow” reconciles the micro and the macro world [God or No God] and we do have a measure of autonomy, that doesn’t make my own arguments go away. The human brain functions in the either/or world such that something at least in the vicinity of the objective truth seems to prevail. But where/what is the equivalent of that in regard to value judgments?

There may well be an equivalent. But I can only note that in philosophy forums [so far] I have myself never come upon an argument that establishes it.

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Compatibilism – also called soft determinism

This is the view that free will and determinism are compatible (can both be true). Hume distinguishes between internal causes (causes that are internal to a person – their beliefs, desires, motivations, intentions) and external causes (causes that are external to a person – someone forcing them to do something). Hume noticed that we only hold people responsible for actions that result from our internal causes. So Hume defined free will as being determined by your internal causes not external causes. Even though our internal causes are just as determined as our external causes, Hume thinks this definition of free will nonetheless gives us the conception of moral responsibility we want.

Back to being totally stumped again. If our “internal causes are just as determined as our external cause” then how are they not in turn responsible for how Hume defined free will?

The “conception of moral responsibility”? Same thing. Some philosophers may want it to include “free will” but if what they want is only what they could never not want…what then?

So, of course…

This is not the definition of free will people want. They want to actually be the uncaused cause of their actions, and to have the ability to have done otherwise. Kant called Hume’s compatibilism ‘wretched subterfuge’ which suggests humans are just like ‘clockwork’.

Again, the part where I get stuck. The part where others focus in on those utterly crucial definitions. If only others would define compatibilism as they do, everything would be resolved. In other words, defining compatibilism despite the inherent gap embedded in this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

Brain scientists don’t grasp this profound mystery yet, let alone philosophers encompassing it all in their worlds of words.

Besides, how does one pin down whether or not, in defining it, one was able to freely opt to define it otherwise?

Here, see what I mean…

Compatibilists argue that free will does not exist, however, yet they claim to have found a definition of free will that allows for ethics.

Argue, argue, argue. Claim, claim, claim.

The distinction between internal and external causes is incoherent. Don’t internal causes ultimately trace back, if we go far enough, to before we were born, and therefore to external causes?

How about this: all the way back to how the human condition itself fits into the definitive understanding of and explanation for the existence of existence itself.

I mean, if it’s not God.

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Libertarianism on moral responsibility and punishment

For libertarianism, the conditions of moral responsibility are Libertarian free will, that the person had the ability to avoid doing the action. Intention: the person intended to do the action.

Here, however, libertarians are no less in the same boat as all the rest of us. They claim to have free will, but they are unable to actually demonstrate this much beyond one or another…argument? Then when confronted with this, well, what else is there but to insist that just like all the rest of us, they “just know” deep down inside them that they do.

And then – click – libertarians like henry quirk who simply shrug off the points I raise in regard to dasein and value judgments. In other words, given free will, they insist further that their own value judgments are derived from logic anchored “somehow” to intuition intertwined “somehow” with God.

The importance of intention for moral responsibility can be seen in the different levels of punishment given for unlawful killing. A premeditated murder will be punished more severely than manslaughter.

Which, again, is why the libertarians among us insists that in regard to intentions, we do have free will. Why? Because intention itself is said to be an “internal” component of our psychological Self. Whereas many determinists argue that, on the contrary, human psychology itself is just another inherent manifestation of the illusion of free will…of a brain wholly derived from the laws of matter.

Thus, distinctions like this…

If you kill someone by hitting them with their car, yet they were so drunk that they just jumped in front of the car and there was nothing you could do, you might even be let off for that. However, if in the same situation you were speeding at the time, and you could possibly have stopped before killing them had you not been speeding, then you could be considered responsible.

…are irrelevant. In either set of circumstances, what unfolds could never have possibly not unfolded. Whether in regard to what did happen or in regard to how we react to what did happen.

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Libertarianism on punishment.

The traditional view of punishment is called retributive punishment; that it was justified because a criminal ‘deserved’ it. This was the justification for medieval forms of punishment involving torture. Although torture is now generally considered barbaric in the west, it is still typically thought that criminals deserve their punishment of prison.

Unless, of course, men and women “choose” criminal behavior because they were never able not to. And we react to that behavior as we do only because we were never free to opt otherwise. And criminals are arrested, tried, found guilty and punished wholly in sync with the only possible reality.

And, in turn, any discussion we have here in regard to criminality and retributive punishment and justice is no less an inherent manifestation of the only possible world.

Spooky, isn’t it?

[Charles] Darrow was a lawyer who used psychological determinism as an argument in the case of two boys, Leopold and Loeb, who had committed murder. Darrow argued the boys were a product of their upbringing, which they did not choose, and therefore should be considered less responsible. Their sentence was reduced from the death penalty to life imprisonment.

See how it works? We all draw the line in different places. Darrow embraces some measure of determinism in regard to the behaviors of Leopold and Loeb…but he stops short of speculating that perhaps his own behavior, his own closing argument at the trial – law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/f … 20court%2C – was also wholly determine by his brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

Same with the sentence reduction. That was never not going to be reduced because in a wholly determined universe if it was reduced there was never any possibility of it being otherwise.

Then this part…

Libertarianism seems quite harsh in its ignoring of the consequence of the influence of upbringing on people’s choices, which can be immense.

Here let’s presume that the Libertarians are right and “somehow” we acquired free will. But what any number of Libertarians then do is to insist that each of us as individuals is wholly responsible for our behaviors. Class, race, gender, ethnicity etc., are entirely moot. As are dasein and the Benjamin Button Syndrome.

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Determinism on moral responsibility and punishment

Libertarians and determinists typically agree that moral responsibility depends on free will. Without free will, a person could not possibly have acted differently and so we cannot consider them praiseworthy nor blameworthy for their actions. It’s hard to make sense of the idea that a person is responsible for their action if there was no possibly way that they could have avoided it.

Which is why I am still unable to grasp how compatibilists reconcile determinism with moral responsibility. They speak of the need to punish those who behave immorally as though “somehow” the “internal” components of their brain/mind transcend the laws of matter. And all I can then presume – compelled to in turn or not? – is that they believe this only because they were never able not to believe it.

Since determinism claims that free will does not exist, it looks like moral responsibility cannot exist either and this brings the justification for punishment into question.

On the other hand, determinists have no way of demonstrating definitively – scientifically? – that human beings do not have free will. We’re all basically ignorant – woefully ignorant – regarding how the “human condition” itself fits into whatever explanation there might be for existence itself.

Not that this will ever stop the libertarians among us from insisting this part is moot. They “just know” they have free will. Not only that, but those like henry quirk will insist as well that only those who embrace his own rooted existentially in dasein political prejudices are, in fact, true libertarians.

We wouldn’t regard a robot as responsible for its actions, because its actions are determined by its programming. Humans do not have programming, but our actions are determined by the state of our brain, which is itself determined by our genetics and environment. So in terms of moral responsibility, it’s hard to see why there would be a difference between us and the robot, on the deterministic view.

And yet in any number of ways, we are different. Unless, of course, in the only way that ultimately counts, we’re not. So, many simply take an existential leap of faith to free will. As others do to God. They act as though they have it. And, who knows, maybe they do.

Then back to Charles Whitman?

Sam Harris gives another analogy which drives the point further. He referenced a true story about Charles Whitman, a man who suddenly went on a murderous rampage, killing his wife and several other random people. He left a note saying that he loves his wife and has no idea why he is behaving that way, requesting that his brain be studied for an explanation. It was discovered that he had a brain tumor pressing on his amygdala gland (the gland connected with emotions like anxiety and anger) which could explain his unexpected violent outburst.

On the other hand, was or was not Sam Harris himself wholly determined to reference him?

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Harris asks you to consider the effect that learning about this brain tumour has on your sense of the Whitman’s moral responsibility. It seems to remove the sense that they were responsible. The murderer had no control over the brain tumour and thus it seems they had no control over their actions.

Again, how are we not stuck here? At least until scientists and/or philosophers and/or theologians reach a consensus regarding human autonomy. But then stuck further because how would we go about pinning down whether that consensus itself was arrived at autonomously?

Well, providing of course this is not just a trivial pursuit.

Now back to the part where I’m the first to admit I am just not intellectually sophisticated enough to fully grasp…

However, Harris then suggests that actually, in terms of moral responsibility, all human actions are like that.

Okay, but what if Sam Harris has no autonomous control over his suggestions?

The violent actions were predetermined by the neurophysiology of the brain tumour, but if determinism is true, then all human actions are predetermined by neurophysiology. A brain tumour is an obvious striking case of interference in normal functioning, but if normal functioning is just as pre-determined as a brain tumour, then in terms of being a basis for moral responsibility, they are identical.

Yes, that seems reasonable to me. But: does it include the “normal functioning” we pursue here in posting and in reading the posts of others? Or is it nature and the laws of matter all the way down?

If we are to be logically consistent, we should extend to all humans the same sense of a lack of moral responsibility that we have towards the violent man.

On the other hand, how is human logic itself not entangled in this conundrum? Is it not but one more inherent manifestation of the neurophysiology that may or may not encompass the entirety of human brain?

Well, providing, of course that this too is not just another trivial pursuit.

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Determinism on punishment

Determinists typically claim that punishment cannot be justified retributively because without free will and moral responsibility, there is no coherent sense in which a criminal can be said to ‘deserve’ the punishment.

You know what’s coming…

It’s one thing for determinists to make this claim while framing the claim itself as advocates of free will do. What I call the “free will determinists”. It’s another thing all together however to make this claim while acknowledging that they were never able not to make it.

Punishment occurs as it does because it was never able not to occur as it does. The justifications given are just one more component of the only possible reality. Same with attributing moral responsibility to the one being punished.

Although, again, I’m the first to admit I am not really understanding this distinction in the most rational manner.

The Supreme court of the USA: Free will is a ‘universal and persistent foundation stone in our system of law” and that therefore determinism is “inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system”.

Right, like the Supremes aren’t in the same boat – “the gap”, “Rummy’s Rule” – all the rest of us are in.

On the other hand, point taken? We have to assume we have free will even if that assumption itself is compelled by brains wholly in sync with the laws of matter. Ater all, how does one even begin to wrap their head around a world – a human condition – that really is just nature’s very own equivalent of dominoes all toppling over onto each other autonomically. The brain interchangeable with all of the other organs in our body?

As this statement by SCOTUS shows, libertarians worry that without free will and moral responsibility, the idea of punishment will fail to make sense and we won’t be able to justify punishing criminals, which could make our society fall apart. If a criminal had no choice or control over their actions or even their intentions, as determinism claims, then it’s hard to see how we could justify putting them in prison. Some determinists conclude that punishment cannot be justified.

All of this fretting about something that really may well be completely beyond our control. Still, how many determinists who conclude that punishment cannot be justified are also willing to acknowledge that their own conclusion is just one more domino toppling over on cue like the criminal committing a crime that he or she was never able not to?

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

However, other determinists still think that punishment can be justified, however it needs to be on grounds other than retribution.

Right, like the particular grounds that any of us have come to fall back on existentially, are not all interchangeably justified given the only possible reality.

The defense of society and the reforming of the criminal are justifications for punishment that do not seem to depend on free will.

Unless, of course, everything that everyone thinks, feels, says and does in regard to crime and punishment is wholly determined.

This is the approach taken by northern European countries like Norway. Criminals there typically receive lower sentence durations, live in better conditions in prison and receive greater focus on rehabilitation and re-joinining society.

Sure, perhaps the citizens in Norway have “somehow” acquired free will while the citizens of, say, Texas have not? Or is it the other way around? But, from my frame of mind, that’s how the “free will determinists” seem to function. The criminals were never able not to violate the law, but “society” is “somehow” able to either “choose” to treat them harshly or…coddle them?

Instead of falling apart, countries like Norway who practice this rehabilitation approach to punishment have much lower rates of criminals re-offending compared to countries like the USA which still relies on retributive punishment and even the death penalty.

This, however, is more in the way of a political prejudice. And such prejudices are derived historically and culturally such that Norway took one path to punishment while much of the USA took another path altogether. But that’s the part where even given free will the objectivists among us insist their own dogmatic assessments are the only ones that count.

[iambiguous]

Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Sam Harris is a determinist who argues for justification for punishment consistent with determinism.

And of course “somehow” Harris himself acquired the capacity to embrace “free will determinism”. In other words, such that his own arguments are, what, the exception to the rule? His own brain is matter wholly in sync with the laws of matter…but he is still able to convince himself that his own views on punishment are more reasonable than those determinists who suggest instead that just as criminals are unable not to break the law, those who punish them are unable not to punish them.

Consider the situation of a bear wandering into an area that humans are living in and attacking them. We do not need to think the bear has free will in order to justify tranquilizing it and locking it up if we can or shooting and killing it if we have to.

Of course both bears and human beings are mammals. Over millions of years the first brains became bear brains became our brains. But bear brains are rooted almost entirely in genes [biological imperatives] whereas our brains evolved to encompass memes [social, political and economic narratives] as well. Memes then evolved into morality. And philosophy. And science.

Still, how did our brains come to acquire autonomy? If in fact we possess it at all. It’s not what we think about tranquilizing bears some determinists argue but whether or not what we do think about them we were ever able to freely choose not to. To, instead, think something else. It’s the difference between bears killing us and other human beings killing us. Unless, perhaps, there is no difference?

We could regard human beings in this way too. Putting them in prison or even killing them doesn’t have to be justified as a ‘deserved punishment’, it could simply be justified as necessary for the defence of society.

Back to Schopenhauer:

“Man can do what he wants, but man can’t want what he wants.” It was Arthur Schopenhauer who wrote: “Man does at all times only what he wills, and yet he does this necessarily." the philosopher’s shirt

In regard to morality, different things are justified by different people. But if all of their justifications are rooted in the only possible reality, how are they all not basically interchangeable as justifications?

Should we run this by the bears?

In any event, I’m still willing to acknowledge I am not understanding Harris correctly. And all I can do is – click – bump into someone able to explain him better.

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Free will & Moral responsibility
AQA Ethics

Compatibilism/soft determinism on moral responsibility and punishment

Compatibilists typically attempt to redefine free will to be a human action which is predetermined in a particular way which is consistent with our traditional views on moral responsibility.

Back to that again. Back to those who insist that, first and foremost, what counts here is how we define free will, determinism and compatibilism. As though when we do get around to definitions, free will “somehow” kicks in. Define moral responsibility into existence?

“Mary, you were never able not to abort your unborn baby…but given how I define compatibilism, you are still morally responsible.”

Hume, for example, claimed that we should define free will as when an action is determined by internal causes, because it is for actions caused in that way that we have traditionally ascribed praise or blame.

So, for Hume, a person has moral responsibility for actions which are determined by their internal causes, such as their intentions, personality, desires, knowledge, beliefs, etc.

Back again to that, as well: “internal causes”.

As long as no one puts a gun to Mary’s head, commanding her to “abort the baby or die”, she’s still “somehow” “responsible” for doing so. Her “intentions, personality, desires, knowledge, beliefs” etc, kick in making her liable for the baby’s demise.

A person is not morally responsible for their actions which were determined by external causes, however.

Of course, even here some argue that when another puts a gun to her head commanding her to abort the baby, they too do so only because in the only possible reality they were never able not to.

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Why Sam Harris is confused about free will
Dan Jones

Harris’s position on free will is straightforward enough. The universe is deterministic, and the behaviour of every entity in the universe is determined by the fixed laws of nature. This includes everything from the motion of atoms and the planets to human behaviour. On this view, according to Harris, there is no such thing as deep responsibility, and humans are no more responsible for their actions (in a deep sense) than mountains are for having avalanches.

Deep responsibilitty?

Okay, in regard to Mary aborting her unborn baby, how would a philosopher go about differentiating deep from shallow responsibility?

Hard determinism and moral responsibility

This is Free Will 101, as Paul Bloom said of another recent essay outlining a position similar to Harris’s. This take on free will sometimes goes by the name of hard determinism, and is defined by two key claims: first, that determinism is true; and second, that free will therefore does not exist. It’s hardly a new or unheard of view; indeed, most discussions of free will start with the problems that hard determinism poses for notions of responsibility, and the moral implications that follow: namely, that if we’re not really responsible for our actions, then how could we be morally culpable for our bad actions, and how could we meaningfully deserve praise for our good actions?

Yep, that’s where some hard determinists take this. On the other hand, how many of them will acknowledge in turn that their brains compel them to take it there?

Hard determinism contrasts with the dominant position in contemporary Western philosophy, known as compatibilism. Compatibilist philosophers, such as Dan Dennett, accept that determinism is true, but do not believe that this truth poses the threats to free will and moral responsibility that hard determinists see. That is, compatibilists argue that determinism is compatible with free will and moral responsibility, and so we can meaningfully talk about culpability, guilt, blame, praise and other features of moral judgements.

Okay, so how is what Dennett accepts and believes here not as well an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality?

How is this…

“…compatibilists argue that determinism is compatible with free will and moral responsibility, and so we can meaningfully talk about culpability, guilt, blame, praise and other features of moral judgements…”

…applicable to Mary aborting her unborn baby?

Let’s face it – click – many refuse to accept the possibility of a world where everything they think and feel and say and do, they were never able not to. Why? Because they would then be unable to pat themselves on the back for all of their accomplishments. Likewise, some might embrace hard determinism because then they could argue that they are not really responsible for all of the things they failed to accomplish. Their lives are in the toilet but it’s “beyond their control”.