“… any activities an individual may undertake or be subject to are… Known to be a subsection of a causally sufficient network of forces, extending immeasurably before and beyond that individual in time as well as in space.”
Simon Brodbeck, introduction to the Bhagavad Gita in a translation to English by Juan Mascaro. When I read that I thought of you and your dilemma (which is really everyone’s dilemma insofar as they are a separate individual.)
Would you consider yourself a “soft determinist” Felix?
I’m not sure what a soft determinist is (or a hard one). I’d like to move away from the complicated, highly charged abortion issue to a simpler one, where people generally agree on the morality involved. I don’t think abortion is a good issue in relation to responsibility and determinism because there are so many issues that will get brought up in practice around it.
The issue I will present is someoner runs up to me on the street and hits me with a hammer. This is someone I do not know and I haven’t done anything to this person. Would I hold them responsible if I believed in any form of determinism, soft or hard? Yes.
The circumstances of their life might shift the degree of my emotional reactions to them, but I would still hold them responsible. What does this mean? I would call the police, knowing full well, that this person might end up in prison or potentially some kind of forced psychiatric care. Yes, that was an inevitable act on his part, but he did it. He is the person who does this kind of thing. If someone had his wife at gunpoint and said hit that guy with a hammer, then he isn’t really a guy who runs up to strangers and hits them with a hammer. It took a very specific chain of causes to lead him to this act, ones that society can consider very unlikely to occur again, and in any case any measures taken to prevent such repeated situations are better aimed at other people and not this guy.
He is, it seems, a person who can do this. I will feel those feelings I feel when I hold someone responsible for someone and I see no reason to try to stop having those feelings if I am convinced completely it is a fully determined universe. Heck, my feelings are also caused. I also see no reason to not treat him as responsible for the act. I could hold the universe responsible, but that gives me no practical reaction. Holding this man responsible leads to measures being taken that hopefully will prevent or minimize the changes of it happening again AND will also be cause possibly preventing other hammar wielders.
Oh, they put people in prison for attackinig people with hammers, I am going to try not to do that, even though I feel a strong urge. Holding the individual responsible sets in motion consequences that in turn become causes that may prevent other people from doing that or something similar.
The specific measures taken due to my holding someone responsible are certainly up for debate: psychiatric care, me yelling at them until they (possibly) feel shame, prison, probation, counseling, attending AA or NA (if addiction was a factor) and so on. But I want some kind of measures taken and I want those measures first of all aimed at that man.
Of course other factors are at play and if determinism is the case, I think I might focus even more on societal causes. For example, if he was bullied in school horrendously for a decade and no one did much about this, I would also hold the school system, either part of it or the system itself, responsible. So, responsibility gets spread around, perhaps to some degree more if one is a determinist. But one does not need to choose between. And, of course, the school system had to be the way it was, in terms of determined outcomes. I could try to hold the Big Bang responsible and try to hit it with a hammer, but this 1) I can’t do 2) doesn’t in any way help prevent future violence and 3) need not rule out holding this guy responsible.
If it turns out he is psychotic, my reactions will be affected, and if meds or therapy can eliminate the problem, then in a sense I would no longer hold him responsible, once that first holding him responsible led to him getting the care he needed. I’m certainly not going to suggest anti-psychotic meds get put in our water supply. No I will be viewing him as the problem until he is not.
Do you hold people responsible for their actions? How would this change if you were sure determinism was the case or you were sure free will was the case? Would you, for example, hold objectivists less responsible if things are completely determined, and how would this play out? In other words, not just the thoughts in your head, but how would your thoughts affect things on a practical level?
You could also use the hammer incident example? There’s free will and you know it OR there’s determinism and you know it. What practical differences would you want there to be in relation to the hammer wielder? Would you hold him responsible in one universe where you know it is determined and another where you know there is free will? And if the answer is different - for example, you would hold him resonsible in the free will world but not in the other, what actual differences would this thought lead to?
I’m generally not comfortable with labels for myself. But, once one learns the scientific concept of universal causation, as I did in school well over fifty years ago, how can one seriously view oneself as an exception to it?
When you catch the Apple instead of letting it fall to the ground?
If you are an free at the quantum level, are you free to not be free?
To not be free, freely ignore personhood.
Ah yes— personhood. Our story. Everybody loves a good story. Especially when they are at the story’s center. Dreams have that in common with waking life. The ego is a useful fiction in the multiplicity game we’re playing.
I don’t think soft determinists reject that view.
Iambiguous said “if anyone here is a soft determinist…” and then asked the soft determinists a question, and you answered, so I naturally thought that meant you consider yourself one and was curious about your thoughts.
To my point. That is a form of what can be called “soft determinism” compatible with my thinking. The ego–the belief that we are a separate self is a useful fiction in a game in which the one hides in the many. See the Upanishads and/or Bhagavad Gita.
I guess it wasn’t, and still is not, clear to me what your point was in your initial reply to iambiguous. He asked a question, and you quoted it, but I’m not sure what your answer is.
“If anyone here is a soft determinist, would you hold her morally responsible for a behavior she was never able not to “choose”.”
Would you?
Again, [quote=“felix dakat, post:461, topic:49220, username:felix_dakat”]
“… any activities an individual may undertake or be subject to are… Known to be a subsection of a causally sufficient network of forces, extending immeasurably before and beyond that individual in time as well as in space.”
[/quote]
So, it’s what happens when the individual’s freedom is a shadow play of the mind. How do you change all those minds?
I do not know what that means, or what your answer to biggys question is.
I think he might be in a reverse solipsistic nightmare.
Where does one begin to change a determinist world? It’s like trying to straighten a puppy’s curly tail. It just springs back into a curl. Human’s continue to evolve biologically and culturally. Pinker, Schermer and others argue it is going in the direction of “our better angels”. In societies that includes passing judgment on their constituents. Is that any less determined than Mary’s abortive act? Jesus counsels “Judge not lest you be judged”. See the story of the woman caught in adultery. Substitute abortion. Who has the right to cast the first stone? The collective casts it. Right be damned. Solipsism happy or sad has nothing to do with it.
I really don’t see how that answers the question Biggy asked, which you quoted. I’ll stop asking now though.
If she was never able not to choose, obviously she should not be held responsible. The question was supposed to be whether she was able to choose or not. Iambiguous has already answered it. The question now should be: do we agree with his answer? I suspend judgment. I’m not the judge. It’s beyond my pay grade.
Relevant to this discussion, this guy, who Wiki says invented the first commercial microprocessor, relates consciousness to quantum physics and free will.
“Neither do I judge you. Go and sin no more.”
From the naturalistic perspective, libertarian free will (as described by Chisholm) is impossible.
“If we are responsible…, then we have a prerogative which some would attribute only to God: each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we do, we cause certain events to happen, and nothing—or no one—causes us to cause those events to happen.”
(Chisholm, Roderick M. “Freedom and Action.” In Freedom and Determinism, edited by Keith Lehrer, 11-44. New York: Random House, 1966. p. 23)
By the way, if there is such a thing as quantum randomness, it cannot give us free will either. The crucial question is whether we are capable of making decisions or performing actions which are neither random nor predetermined.
Faggin says the source of freedom is the quantum field. I don’t think he uses the term “quantum randomness.” I haven’t read his book just seen the videos. I’m thinking of picking it up.