Let's redo a classic: Freewill vs Determinism

[belligerent drunk]

Schrodinger equation is resolutely deterministic as given all the inputs, you can only have the wave function behave one way.

It is still a wavefunction that describes a probabilistic QM system. For example, the square of a wavefunction of an electron orbital represents the probability of finding an electron around the nucleus of that atom - it's still probabilistic.

I have come across neuroscientists who say these stochiastic neural processes are the foundation of free will. So I do not think it is as clear as A+B>>>C.

Definitely not as clear as I wrote it, and I know that, but I had to do that for simplicity's sake. However, how can stochastic processes give free will? Just because we do not understand something to its fullest extent, or there may be random factors at play that are unpredictable, how does that somehow imply supernatural phenomena? In any case, if you think about it, it doesn't even make sense. If it's stochastic/random, then how is it free will if free will is supposed to be anything BUT random?

Think about it. Say a person is going to crack a beer, but then an extra sodium ion squeezes through an ion channel somewhere in the membrane, which suddenly changes the course of action of downstream impulses and that results in that person deciding to roll a joint instead. That was pretty random. Free will? HOW? What I'm trying to say is that if there is no clear evidence that suggests free will (and explicitly free will), then there is no reason to believe it exists and it's just way more likely that it's the way turk explains it - it's one of the peculiarities of our brains.

 

[turkalurk]

I had started to write a better explanation of my views about polar opposites, but I lost it somehow. I hope you can see that although I don't believe in a freewill, I also don't believe in an imprisoned will. I do believe our will lies somewhere in the middle. I don't interpret polarities as two seperate absolutes that exist independently from each other, but rather different parts of the same semantical device which uses them to compare and contrast each other. Does that make any sense? I am not the best at putting my thoughts into language. I can quote the tao te ching, but its still a hard concept to grasp if you are not already inclined to see the world through a similar paradigm.

Here is an annotation from

http://taotechingtoday.com/tao-te-ching-chapter-2-discussion-ep-0004/

on the tao te ching

Chapter 2 we continue with the motif that is going be prevalent throughout the entire Tao Te Ching that judging things and thinking about things isn’t a productive use of your time or anyone’s time, because … the first couple of lines is actually a little deeper than that with multiple meanings. Because when you say “When all the world recognizes beauty as beauty, this in itself is ugliness” the entire chapter suggest that, okay… if you look at good, you cannot look at good without also acknowledging bad or things that are not good, because there would be no good without the bad that exist in relation to the good so you must also acknowledge the bad as something that’s blessed because without the bad, you wouldn’t understand what good is.

And so, the rest of the chapter drives that home as well–Long and short exhibit each other. High and low set measure to each other. Voice and sound harmonize each other. Back and front follow each other—there is nothing that is measured as good or desirable or preferable without the things that exist that are not good, that are not desirable, that are not preferable because it is those opposites that create your potentially pleasurable existence and thus, [I have my mouth pad here] this Yin Yang is the symbol of Taoism and is basically what Chapter 2 is talking about. In that, you know everybody strives for the Yang in life but the Yin help sets it and helps create the Yang in existence so everything must be appreciated. The downtimes in your life offset the good times, in that they create the relativity that allows you to enjoy the good times as good and so you must cherish them also, the bad times or the lesser than good times and accept them both as reality. And if you can see the world in that way, you can see the bad times also as good times also as the beauty of the entire universe; the beauty of everything, the beauty of your entire existence includes the bad times. But the other meaning inside these first two lines “when all the world recognizes beauty as beauty, this in itself is ugliness” and this is driving home the first point that in Chapter 1 when we discussed about mindfulness and judgment that when you’re seeing beauty as beauty, when you are judging beauty as beauty—this is ugly. This is the mind passing judgment on existence.

The second line, “When all the world recognizes good as good—this in itself is evil”. There’s second meaning to this if you look deeper into it that says: When you are judging good as good, this is evil because you are then ignoring the other than good that allows the good to occur so it’s kind of a catch 22 as many paradoxes exist in spirituality in general, you know, but even if you like Christianity, I mean, Alpha and the Omega, this is recognizing two sides of the coin. Again, going back to the Yin and Yang symbol that both good and bad, tall and short, high and low must exist for all of it to exist. And so, the lesson I think in Chapter 2 that we need to take away to from is again, one of a mindlessness or mind focus on everything is beauty and all parts of existence are as they are

 

[swilow]

You can have a limited freewill but the limited and free part of the "will" just cancel each other out and the underlying message is that you have a will. If it makes you feel better about your life, then by all means label your will whatever you'd like. But, yes, I believe we are responsible for our actions. We just aren't solely responsible. We are held accountable for our actions because we experience how our actions effect our world. But the world shares the burden with us. Its all interconnected and life is interdependent upon its biosphere.

Fair enough. Do you think that limits responsibility too much? I agree, one must not discount the role of other's and the broader environment in individual behaviour, but I tend to believe that the ultimate responsibility for one's actions lies within oneself. I think that is where humans are seperate from the natural world, in that our behaviour is unpredictable in contrast with the actions of other animals and lifeforms, because of our limited capacity to think for ourselves. It is relatively simple to predict the behaviour of a dog, given known inputs, but a human can possibly act in countless ways.

None of this makes me feel better or worse about my life or anything. I know you mention the ego quite a lot. Do you think it could be a function of the ego to attempt to partially abdicate responsibility for our own actions? In the same manner that you consider holding to free-will as something ego/fear based?

I have experienced addiction over the years, and I do not blame or lay this at the feet of anyone else but me. At the same time, I take pride from the fact that I was able to break these physical addictions, mainly because I'm not as likely to suffer and/or die soon, and that's a pretty good thing. I will never persecute a person for their choices, but I will always consider them to be the prime causal agent in their own lives.

As for Einstein, show me a solid reference that Einstein said such nonsense. I've read lots of his quotes and he is often misquoted. Here is a quote that helps explain what I've been trying to communicate:

I'm not going to spend any time trying to provide a "solid reference" but here is the actual quote I am talking about, and its pretty similar to your own example:

"I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime," he said, "but I prefer not to take tea with him."

I wonder if he felt the need to beleive such a thing as a response to his inadvertent catalysing of the nuclear age? Of course, Einstein is no responsible for what others chose to do with his discoveries so...

 

[turkalurk]

yup, its ego. You don't exist seperate from nature.

I believe he could have said that quote now that I see it in its proper context, but the message in it's entirety drives home the same point I've been making. On a macroscopic level, you have no control over your destiny. You don't get decide who you are, but I don't get to decide who I am either. And, I am a person who won't socialize with murderers. And, we are a society that punishes criminals.

The ego clings to superiority. It has to believe in freewill or otherwise we all are equally human. What my philosophy suggests, is that through the eyes of a Supreme Being, we are all in the same boat. I have a kind of distant empathy for hardened criminals. There has to be a villain for every hero. Does that mean they are absolved from the role of a criminal and shouldn't be treated as such. Of course not. It's unfortunate that there is a role for psychopaths, and they are just being who the world made them to be, but that doesn't negate the way things are it just explains what is. They are still a threat to society regardless of whether they were born into the circumstances that made them a threat.

The drug thing is another good example. What if you lived a life on an island where you had never been introduced to drugs? Do you really think you would be making the same decisions you are making now? Or did your experiences shape who you are?

Lets go back to the scales thing. Think of genetic dispositions as each person's individual calibration settings. There may only be a few thousand calibration settings and these settings represent your inherent nature. Think of experience as a series of measurements with the scale, weighing the rewards of actions against consequences. Each person has their own history of measurements. Not everyone experienced the same weights placed on their scale. So we are going to see a wide range of potential behavior because even the same computations will produce different results based of the variation of subjective experiences forming their own individual frame of reference. Everyone wants to believe they made themselves who they are, but the more you break down what makes you who you are, the less sense it makes that you were the one deciding it. We experience the decisions being made, but we don't control the variables that influenced who we are and how we make our decisions.

 

[Nixiam]

My brain wasn't quite built for this, but ey whatever. I'm still enjoying this debate.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

It sounds like Einstein didn't believe in free will too much as well then?

 

[neurotic]

i think it is all around bad to mix the determinism vs. nondeterminism thing with notion such as responsability and questions like "if determinism, then a murderer cannot be held accountable for their crime. if so, how can you punish them for something they are not responsible of?". (excuse me if there is no such debate here. i just skimmed through the two previous pages and got this impression).

determinism follows pretty straightforwardly from a "materialistic" view of the brain, and the key here, i think, is the fact that determinism doesn't exclude the possibility of responsability, freedom, etc... because these ones are phenomenological events, which, imo, do not need to reflect reality at all.*

with this i mean, one can still ~feel~ free even with determinism. and one can still ~feel~ in control even. discussions on ethics aren't affected by determinism.
i mean, if determinism, then there isn't any discussion in the first place, since everything is already determined: one's wondering about determinism, one's affirmation on the existence of free-will, the punishing of a murderer by a society who never considered determinism, then the not-punishing of another murder by another society who thought determinism implied we shouldn't punish anyone, etc...

* i assume that people who consider the possibility of free-will do so because they think they actively participate on their decisions (what else would point towards free-will?)

... ugh, it is SO hard to talk about these subjects. btw, that Schopenhauer quote in the Einstein quote is from "On the Freedom of the Will" which is a book that i think anyone interested in the subject would benefit from reading.

 

[drug_mentor]

i think it is all around bad to mix the determinism vs. nondeterminism thing with notion such as responsability and questions like "if determinism, then a murderer cannot be held accountable for their crime. if so, how can you punish them for something they are not responsible of?". (excuse me if there is no such debate here. i just skimmed through the two previous pages and got this impression).

determinism follows pretty straightforwardly from a "materialistic" view of the brain, and the key here, i think, is the fact that determinism doesn't exclude the possibility of responsability, freedom, etc... because these ones are phenomenological events, which, imo, do not need to reflect reality at all.*

with this i mean, one can still ~feel~ free even with determinism. and one can still ~feel~ in control even. discussions on ethics aren't affected by determinism.
i mean, if determinism, then there isn't any discussion in the first place, since everything is already determined: one's wondering about determinism, one's affirmation on the existence of free-will, the punishing of a murderer by a society who never considered determinism, then the not-punishing of another murder by another society who thought determinism implied we shouldn't punish anyone, etc...

Most people I have encountered who have studied ethics agree with Kant that ought implies can. I agree, to me it doesn't make any sense to say that someone has a moral obligation to act in a way which is impossible for them to act. Equally, it doesn't make sense to hold someone responsible for something which they had absolutely no control over.

If we assume for a moment that determinism is true, why do you think the illusory experience of free-will should be morally significant? You are essentially advocating punishing people for having a certain sensation, a sensation which they had no choice in having. That seems incredibly unjust to me.

 

[Kittycat5]

It is still a wavefunction that describes a probabilistic QM system. For example, the square of a wavefunction of an electron orbital represents the probability of finding an electron around the nucleus of that atom - it's still probabilistic.



Definitely not as clear as I wrote it, and I know that, but I had to do that for simplicity's sake. However, how can stochastic processes give free will? Just because we do not understand something to its fullest extent, or there may be random factors at play that are unpredictable, how does that somehow imply supernatural phenomena? In any case, if you think about it, it doesn't even make sense. If it's stochastic/random, then how is it free will if free will is supposed to be anything BUT random?

Think about it. Say a person is going to crack a beer, but then an extra sodium ion squeezes through an ion channel somewhere in the membrane, which suddenly changes the course of action of downstream impulses and that results in that person deciding to roll a joint instead. That was pretty random. Free will? HOW? What I'm trying to say is that if there is no clear evidence that suggests free will (and explicitly free will), then there is no reason to believe it exists and it's just way more likely that it's the way turk explains it - it's one of the peculiarities of our brains.

I dont know belligerent and it makes little sense to me but this literally was 5 mins of searching on the subject so as I said, I am intrigued, but know nothing of the specifics. I am reading a paper now and will see if its bunk or not.

Turkalurk, how would you define free will exactly? I am curious if you only think it is a coping mechanism of the ego as you described or if you have a broader definition such as the ability to choose our actions or something along those lines.

 

[neurotic]

If we assume for a moment that determinism is true, why do you think the illusory experience of free-will should be morally significant? You are essentially advocating punishing people for having a certain sensation, a sensation which they had no choice in having. That seems incredibly unjust to me.

i think the illusory experience of free-will should be significant for practical purposes. if determinism, then nobody can be held "responsible" for anything, and if we use this "responsability" as the criterium for punishment, then nobody gets punished - unpractical. this illusory experience is then all that is left.*

on the unjustice of this: well, if this is unjust then so are many other things. may be someone is born more intelligent, with great social skills and a hard-working type. they will succeed in their career, thei relationships, whatever (just for the sake of the example ofc), but having those virtues is not their merit. and then also isn't a defect being lazy, irresponsible, stupid, etc... pretty much everything would be unjust, so being unjust would be irrelevant.

if we assume determinism to be true, do you think that there is any possibility for justice in this sense? i would be interested to hear it, because i can't think of any (hence my point).

* i would also say that most of the things that are relevant for humans are, like the sensation of freedom, "illusory", so being "illusory" is not necessarily bad: it is all that could possibly matter for us. meaning, for example. life is objectively meaningless, but we still look for meaning in it, and it being meaningless does not make one's experience of meaning any less meaningful. or, why do we make efforts to stay alive? why not just starve? why is dying bad? hence i think these illusions should be significant in such debates instead of "objective truths" such as determinism. we argue for what would be better and everything, because we all want to live, we all don't want to suffer, etc... while objectively, this is all pointless. of course that would be another subject etc etc...

 

[turkalurk]

I dont know belligerent and it makes little sense to me but this literally was 5 mins of searching on the subject so as I said, I am intrigued, but know nothing of the specifics. I am reading a paper now and will see if its bunk or not.

Turkalurk, how would you define free will exactly? I am curious if you only think it is a coping mechanism of the ego as you described or if you have a broader definition such as the ability to choose our actions or something along those lines.

To me freeing the will simply implies that the more we can come to understand our subconscious impulses and cultural influences the more we can free ourselves of the influence that is external to our rational conscious decision making. The more you can understand the cognitive biases and the subjectivity of our perspective, the more objective our perspective can become. But we can never achieve an absolutely objective perspective because we will always be the subject of our experience. There is no such thing as absolute freedom, but it is the (reductionist)nature of our language to imply separation in order for distinction. We can conceive of it existing in an absolute and seperate sense, but reality doesn't work like that. The idea of freedom can only be applied as an absolute to ideas like infinity. In the common usage, it has to be applied in the context of a relationship. You can be free from a particular external influence, but not free in a general sense.

I think that is the question commonly overlooked and is often the source of conflict. What exactly is the will free from? The overall point in all this is to communicate an idea. The idea in this being that those who focus on the minimal control we can exert on the world will label this minimal control a "free" will. Those who see how the world is interconnected into a causal web of reality, will see that even this minimal amount of control can not equate freedom from the circumstances that gave them their sense of control in the first place.

I think its weird that some believe that people are not accountable for their actions just because they are playing the role fate handed them. Its like being out in the desert, facing a lion, and deciding the lion isn't responsible for being a lion so we ought to just let it eat everyone up because its not his fault he is hungry. Sounds pretty stupid doesn't it? Funny how so many want to imagine how the world ought to be how they want it to be and cry about how ugly and brutal the world is. What a bunch of crybabies. Look at this vast existence and the scarcity of Life. Sorry if the world doesn't fit your vision of a perfect utopia devoid of conflict, but that world would be full of weak ass organisms that never had to fight to survive. You show me a person crying about the ugly cruel nature of the world, and I will show you the narrowness of their perspective and how it all boils down to some way they think the world ought to be, that it isn't. Like I have said, when people think they are in a place where they can judge Existence, they seem like ungrateful little brats blaming their mothers for birthing them. God is not a human trying to make the best world for humans, thats just stupid. There is no eternal punishment for being who you are, that is just stupid. But, that doesn't absolve you of who you are. You also have to keep in mind that holding people accountable for their actions also shapes who people are. If we decided to go against who we are and not provide consequences for people's actions, then that would significantly change who we are. I am not worried about it, because we are who we are and we aren't going to change in that way, because it goes against our nature. Actions have consequences, even when you think you avoided punishment. You might get away from the law, but your action still had an effect on the world and on who you are.

So, we have a will, and applying this idea of freedom serves a particular function. This idea that we control our fate, allows us to overcome our selfish impulses and over-ride our cognitive biases to gain a greater amount of self-control. It also allows us to take action against those who pose a threat or danger to our community. If we did actually feel empathy with their plight on a biological level, that would weaken our resolve to protect ourselves against them. Philosophically we can empathize with their plight because we are able to project ourselves outward and imagine ourselves from a more objective point of view. This has its own function and value, as it broadens our perspective and helps us to imagine more possible truths about the world. However, no matter how objective of a position we project ourselves, we can only allow these projections to influence our subjectivity to minimize our selfishness. We never actually attain absolute objectivity. But, just like we have a "sense" of freedom, we can attain a feeling of selflessness. Just because we know our perceptions are allusions(not illusions) of reality doesn't mean we ought not to experience them. I don't mean to suggest we are wrong to act as though we do play a role in our fate because we do. The world may ultimately be responsible, but don't forget you are a piece of the world too. Therefore, you are also responsible. Who you are and the choices you make are your fate. Your whole subjective reality, like anything else, is a reflection of Nature. We are all just human beings expressing that human aspect of Being. We are not gods of this world better than all other organisms because we are human and possess imagination. We can imagine ourselves better than all other organisms because of this imaginary freedom, but without Nature, we wouldn't have an imagination in the first place.

 

[belligerent drunk]

If we assume for a moment that determinism is true, why do you think the illusory experience of free-will should be morally significant?

It shouldn't.

You are essentially advocating punishing people for having a certain sensation, a sensation which they had no choice in having. That seems incredibly unjust to me.

Unjust is subjective thus somewhat (fully) irrelevant in the context of morality. However, acknowledging that, we, as a society, can come up with a system that is such that enables our procreation and at the same time minimizes the suffering (median subjective individual suffering) that any one individual has to face during their life. Why do we want to create such a society? Because our brain is not indifferent, and it has certain preferences towards the environment. If you think about evolution, it should become pretty clear why and how that is.

We haven't been able to create such a society yet, but then again we aren't that far off either, compared to some past civilizations. We don't punish criminals because it's the moral thing to do, or because what they do is immoral. It doesn't matter. None of it. It's because the chemical processes in the brains of the majority of people say so, and they themselves have evolutionary origins.

 

[drug_mentor]

i think the illusory experience of free-will should be significant for practical purposes. if determinism, then nobody can be held "responsible" for anything, and if we use this "responsability" as the criterium for punishment, then nobody gets punished - unpractical. this illusory experience is then all that is left.*

on the unjustice of this: well, if this is unjust then so are many other things. may be someone is born more intelligent, with great social skills and a hard-working type. they will succeed in their career, thei relationships, whatever (just for the sake of the example ofc), but having those virtues is not their merit. and then also isn't a defect being lazy, irresponsible, stupid, etc... pretty much everything would be unjust, so being unjust would be irrelevant.

if we assume determinism to be true, do you think that there is any possibility for justice in this sense? i would be interested to hear it, because i can't think of any (hence my point).

I agree that whether determinism is true doesn't alter the fact that for practical purposes you need a criminal justice system. Despite this, it makes no sense to attribute blame to individuals who have no control over their actions, and if determinism is true then it makes no sense to frame the criminal justice system around punishment. Moreover, it is completely nonsensical to say that the reason they would be getting locked up is because of an illusory sensation. It makes much more sense to appeal to the social good that is achieved through deterrence and the separation of violent individuals from the rest of society.

I concede that in a deterministic world the concept of justice holds little to no weight, regardless, if not as a matter of justice then surely as a matter of logic you can agree that it makes more sense to appeal to social good as a justification for locking people up than it does to appeal to an illusory sensation.

Unjust is subjective thus somewhat (fully) irrelevant in the context of morality. However, acknowledging that, we, as a society, can come up with a system that is such that enables our procreation and at the same time minimizes the suffering (median subjective individual suffering) that any one individual has to face during their life. Why do we want to create such a society? Because our brain is not indifferent, and it has certain preferences towards the environment. If you think about evolution, it should become pretty clear why and how that is.

Your claim that justice is irrelevant in the context of morality is one of the more outrageous claims I have encountered recently. Morality or ethics are principles formed out of value judgements about what constitutes right and wrong, justice is essentially the upholding of these principles. I would argue justice and morality are so intertwined that you cannot conceive of one without implicitly conceiving the other. I also don't see how one could argue that one is more subjective than the other, although you didn't explicitly make this claim I think it is implicit in the first sentence of the quoted passage.

 

[belligerent drunk]

Your claim that justice is irrelevant in the context of morality is one of the more outrageous claims I have encountered recently. Morality or ethics are principles formed out of value judgements about what constitutes right and wrong, justice is essentially the upholding of these principles. I would argue justice and morality are so intertwined that you cannot conceive of one without implicitly conceiving the other. I also don't see how one could argue that one is more subjective than the other, although you didn't explicitly make this claim I think it is implicit in the first sentence of the quoted passage.

I may have worded my comment poorly (not the first time, not the last either). What I meant to say is that both justice and morality are subjective, and thus could be seen as having little ground for them. You say that it is unjust to punish criminals for doing something that they had no choice (and no, they didn't) in doing. Well, you're looking at it wrong. Let's assume that free will does not exist. So with this premise you cannot have absolute morality or anything like that, meaning that the moral rules we have come up with are made up, and since we have no free will, then they are made up by the chemical processes going on in our brains (which I partially explained in my last comment). And the criminals have their own processes going on in their brains that result in behavior that other people (chemically) object to. And thus punish them. If there is no free will, then it really is that simple.

The way you're thinking is that the criminals have no free will, but the people punishing them do. No one has, though, and that is the point.

 

[drug_mentor]

I already conceded the point on justice not being applicable to a deterministic world. I don't think determinism negates the need for a criminal justice system, the main point I was raising is that it doesn't make sense for a determinist to think of the criminal justice system in terms of personal responsibility and punishment. This is not a point about ethics but rather a point about logic and an appropriately discriminating choice of language.

Asserting that justice and morality are subjective is a very controversial claim, you may well be correct on the matter but it is a position which requires some argument in order to be convincing. Because this is not a thread on meta-ethics I will not press this issue any further.

 

[belligerent drunk]

Indeed, the topic of the thread is not whether morality et al is subjective, but if you want to discuss that, then perhaps an appropriate thread is due. I'm quite surprised that you may disagree with me that morality is subjective however, I was under a slightly different impression of you, but I am often wrong, especially since we haven't had the opportunity to discuss many topics.

On your first point, though. Words like responsibility and punishment are perhaps misnomers? But what other words would you use in their stead, then? I think using words like personal responsibility is perfectly fine, because in day-to-day practice we don't think about whether somebody has a choice in their life or not.

My brain wasn't quite built for this, but ey whatever. I'm still enjoying this debate.

You're still young, AFAIK, so I wouldn't give up that easy. I mean, the things I did in high school better be left unmentioned in this intelligent company. I think I finally accumulated enough cranial capacity to think about complicated topics somewhere during university. So, kudos for being interested in such discussions, young man!

I guess, a point which I dont think anyone brought up, is that indeterminism does not equal free will.

Sorry for the late reply, I obviously didn't notice this sentence before. I mentioned this many times and if you look at some of my previous comments, then I explicitly tackle that question. Indeterminism in no way suggests free will:

And whether our brain is deterministic or not doesn't matter here. It is of interest, of course, to me especially, but QM doesn't add to the free will of anyone. What I mean by deterministic or not is, if we look at the same chemical chain reaction example as I presented before:

A (stimulus) -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F (result #1) - has ~100% probability of happening, meaning it is deterministic.

A (stimulus) -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F (result #1) - has 29% probability of happening, meaning it will happen in 29% of the universes
A (stimulus) -> B -> C -> G -> U -> T (result #2) - has 33% probability of happening, and so on. This is non-deterministic.

 

[drug_mentor]

Indeed, the topic of the thread is not whether morality et al is subjective, but if you want to discuss that, then perhaps an appropriate thread is due. I'm quite surprised that you may disagree with me that morality is subjective however, I was under a slightly different impression of you, but I am often wrong, especially since we haven't had the opportunity to discuss many topics.

I don't necessarily disagree that morality is subjective, I lean towards disagreeing, but I must admit I am no longer as certain on the issue as I once was. With that said, I think the various mainstream positions which deny objective morality face as many difficulties as the moral realist.

On your first point, though. Words like responsibility and punishment are perhaps misnomers? But what other words would you use in their stead, then? I think using words like personal responsibility is perfectly fine, because in day-to-day practice we don't think about whether somebody has a choice in their life or not.

In day to day language I agree it is probably inconsequential to use these terms, when discussing the matter philosophically I feel it is better to stick to more accurate terminology. I probably wouldn't have said anything on the language alone, but the talk of hinging the justification of any kind of incarceration or social penalty on an illusory sensation was too much for me.

 

[neurotic]

but the talk of hinging the justification of any kind of incarceration or social penalty on an illusory sensation was too much for me.

Moreover, it is completely nonsensical to say that the reason they would be getting locked up is because of an illusory sensation. It makes much more sense to appeal to the social good that is achieved through deterrence and the separation of violent individuals from the rest of society.

of course... what about this: an individual of a society who appeals to social good through deterrence of violent individuals violently tortures and murders, not for self-defense, another individual. the judges of this society decide to incarcerate him. then, can you say that the reason he was locked up wasn't his illusory sensation of wanting to torture and murder that other guy? there can be some counter examples for this but even then you can say that in a society who appeals to social good, illusory sensations end up being morally significant.

yes, certainly it makes more sense to appeal to social good rather than to appeal to illusory sensations, that is precisely what i had in mind. with the above example i try to illustrate how those two could be confounded. i wasn't trying to devise a constitution to a deterministic society so didn't feel the need to be so detailed. i thought i was clear enough.

 

[Nixiam]

Bringing this back around. I see determinism as applicable if it can be justified by quantum mechanics. So lets go ahead and adjust our eyes to something like Chaos Theory. Say for a second that every "choice" is a science experiment. You're initial environmental conditions matter greatly, and with this in a controlled enviornment, the end result was determined when the conditions were set, or when the choice was made. But some may argue that we don't live in a controlled enviornment, but I'd say more or less that we do, however, WE are enviornmental factors affecting initial conditions, that we ourselves are not the observer of the experiment, but rather a subjective variable.

The moment a decision is made, the moment something becomes predetermined. Our decisions might just be the product of influence.

For free will to exist, this would have to be dismissed. Just a thought.

 

[drug_mentor]

of course... what about this: an individual of a society who appeals to social good through deterrence of violent individuals violently tortures and murders, not for self-defense, another individual. the judges of this society decide to incarcerate him. then, can you say that the reason he was locked up wasn't his illusory sensation of wanting to torture and murder that other guy? there can be some counter examples for this but even then you can say that in a society who appeals to social good, illusory sensations end up being morally significant.

I can't say what the motivations of an imaginary society would be. What I can say is this, it would make no sense for them to appeal to an illusory sensation of free-will when they can appeal to social good. If they appeal to the latter then the need to appeal to the former evaporates.

Furthermore, we can imagine scenarios where people who commit crimes do not feel the usual illusory sensation of responsibility, for example some cases where people commit violent acts whilst extremely disoriented on drugs. Some cases like this we generally think it appropriate to lock the person up, but an appeal to an illusory sensation would not be possible in such a scenario, so in these sorts of cases you would need to appeal to social good to justify any sort of penalty.

The point I am making here is that your proposed justification is completely redundant in cases where it might be applicable, and is not as widely applicable in relevant situations as the justification I have provided. For these reasons it should be abandoned.

yes, certainly it makes more sense to appeal to social good rather than to appeal to illusory sensations, that is precisely what i had in mind. with the above example i try to illustrate how those two could be confounded. i wasn't trying to devise a constitution to a deterministic society so didn't feel the need to be so detailed. i thought i was clear enough.

The ironic thing is that you have been successful in your attempt at demonstrating this, but only by virtue of confounding the two things yourself.

I am clearly not attempting to devise a constitution to a deterministic society either, so I am not sure what your point is there. Clarity and precision are cornerstones of fruitful philosophical discourse, I make no apology for attempting to adhere to these standards.