WJ

Sweet!

Speaking of conscious and conscience, you might get a kick out of this:


Penrose writes,

A scientific world-view which does not profoundly come to terms with the problem of conscious minds can have no serious pretensions of completeness. Consciousness is part of our universe, so any physical theory which makes no proper place for it falls fundamentally short of providing a genuine description of the world. I would maintain that there is yet no physical, biological, or computational theory that comes very close to explaining our consciousness ... (emphasis added)

I don't know if consciousness has some profound metaphysical relation to physics. Science is notoriously unpredictable over the long term, and there are tricky mind-body paradoxes that may ultimately demand a radical solution. But at this point in the vexed history of the problem there is little question about the preferable scientific approach. It is not to try to solve the mind-body problem first --- that effort has a poor track record --- or to pursue lovely but implausible speculations. It is simply to do good science using consciousness as a variable, and investigating its relations to other psychobiological variables.

[end quote]

MadMordigan

Lets all kill each other because we cannot do otherwise.

Lets be clear, the deterministic position is exactly that. Those who kill other people could not have done otherwise.

WJ

Mad!

Wouldn't it make more sense to say something like:

"Those who kill other people could not have done otherwise,'based upon their very own experiences as fully realized by their volitional existence'".

Perhaps the very idea or theory of in-determinism also provides for the illusion/analogy of free-will. Except the illusion, seemingly, is real.

tronvillain

I am a compatiblist, and consider Dennett's Elbow Room to be almost all that needs to be said on the subject of "free will."

How can we be morally responsible in a deterministic world? It is difficult to see how we could be morally responsible in anything other than a deterministic world - the less deterministic the world, the less moral responsibility. To illustrate the ridiculousness of holding people accountable for choices in a non-deterministic world, consider two people rolling a die: one person rolls a two, which is less than three and so the person is labelled "good", while the other perseon rolls a four, which is more than three and so the perosn is labelled "bad."

Kip:
No, it is not obvious that there is no sense of moral responsibility simply because he is "just" a robot who's behavior is determined by his program and environment. After all, I am a robot who's behavior is determined by his program and environment. Also, it may be that the human domain is all that really matters to moral responsibility, as it appears to be an evolved mechanism for regulating human behavior.

As a compatiblist, I deny that the two statement use the word "possible" in the same sense:

1. What do we actually mean when we say "We only hold a person morally responsible if he or she could possibly have done otherwise." Perhaps we mean that if we wind the tape back, a person who had made one choice might make another choice, but since this would actually dimish responsibility , it seems unlikely. The most reasonable interpretation of the statement would seem to be "We only hold a person morally responsible if he or she had other options to choose from."

2. While robots (such as ourselves) may only have one possible response to a given situation, only situations in which other responses could potentially be made offer the possibility of moral responsibility. No moral responsibiliy may exist, but the existence of alternative is a requirement for it.

No one blames the river because it does not make a choice - it does not examine the probable results of its potential actions and then select one. When we blame someone or hold them morally responsible, it simply means that we do not approve of which action they selected.

I on the other hand suspect that we have simply evolved in such a way that those concepts occur to us easily. When, on the subject of free will, we say "I could have chosen otherwise" we simply mean that there were other choices available, and if we encounter the same set of choices again we very well may choose otherwise. When we say that someone is evil, we simply mean that they are in a state that inclines them towards making choices of which we strongly disapprove, and when we blame someone for something we simply mean that they knew their choice would result in what we blame them for and chose it despite the existence of other choices which would not have resulted in things we would blame them for.

Kent Stevens

If someone killed someone else we could attribute that behaviour to the murderer. We could factually say that the murderer was responsible. Then we could start making moral judgements and say that what the murderer did was wrong and we hold the murderer morally responsible. We expect the murderer to be punished and be kept away from the rest of the society.

If a flood killed someone we can attribute this to the flood. We could say the flood was responsible for this. We do not say the flood was wrong to do this. We do not try to punish the flood water. Flood water can not be detered by the threat of punishment. So non-living entities we do not hold morally responsible. We might still try to have preventative measures such as dams to prevent further loss of life.

I think it is partly instinctive to judge people as doing wrong. It is partly due to instinct that we do not judge the weather as doing wrong. In any case our moral disapproval in itself would have no effect on the weather.

Doubting Didymus

Wait a minute, are we really arguing here that humans have only one single option in every situation? If that were the case, then wouldn't it be true that none of us would have a choice in whether we passed a moral judgement? Wouldn't it be pointless to argue about whether we should morally judge people, if we have only one option in each situation?

If we can choose to pass judgement, then a murderer can choose not to murder. If we cannot choose, why do we argue about whether we should?

sweep

kent: you're right- the trouble with punishment is that it serves only as a deterrant. i also don't think it is a good idea to treat the effects, we need to look at the cause and treat the behaviour from the cradle. Treating the effects is a lazy solution and reflects badly on our sense of responsibility as a society. we do have the power to change this- what is stopping us?

On the matter of available choices, what of choices that we cannot see. Are those choices staring us in the face, are they real and undiscovered? How do we go about investigating alternatives? I believe one of the things einstein would do was to forget everything that he had already achieved and start from fresh- a fresh mind sees the world anew. I suppose that is what revision is all about.

If none of you have done so, try 'Beyond freedom and dignity/ B F Skinner (1971) new york: knopf'
The book offers some interesting insights pertinent to this discussion.

thanks for your reply WJ- i did get a kick out of that quote> and now my ass is sore... htanks!

don't know what you mean- interested in an elaboration.

Thanks for unravelling kips post- tron. what you said makes a lot of sense

Ierrellus

Consider the immoral rooster. He has no problem with incest. He will mount his mother, daughter, grandmother and cousin with impunity. He has no problem with murder. He will trample his own offspring to get to a serving of corn. He will spur you, if you get to close to his seraglio. He is head of the pecking order, the divine leader of might makes right.

How are we different from him?

Ierrellus
PAX

Kip

I am glad that someone gave a solid reply. I was disappointed with the others. I have not read Elbow Room although I have read an essay by Dennett in a collection of essays about the controversy.

I admit that determinism is true, which you claim is necessary for moral responsibility, but deny that moral responsibility exists nevertheless, so your demonstration is "beside the point". (Otherwise I would object that, according to the libertarian, unconstrained will, which is not necessarily random, is also compatible with indeterminism and therefore your example is misleading.)

Tronvillain:

This one statement leads me to think that we both share very similar ideas about the controversy. I agree that moral responsibility is probably an "evolved mechanism for regulating human behavior" or in other words a deterrent. I object, however, to your excluding moral responsibility to the human domain simply because we evolved the mechanism. The statement feels anthropocentric.

Now I must object to one statement compatibilists frequently claim:

and

Who is this we? For surely you are not referring to the majority of human beings. When a person says "I could have chosen otherwise" he does not mean, as you assert, that "I could not have done otherwise then (because that would somehow "diminish responsibility"), but I can do otherwise in the future". Rather, the person means "I could have done otherwise at that very moment. Your definition admits that people are more or less robotic and the majority of human beings deny that claim.

You provide an argument for your claim:

My only response to this is confusion. It is not at all clear how free will (as you describe the ability) diminishes responsibility. That is my first objection. My second objection is that you are arguing from human conventions (what we mean when we say something) to what should be. You argue from how humans do recognize moral responsibility to how humans should assign moral responsibility. But that confuses "is" with "ought" and is no different than saying "everyone else is jumping off the bridge so I should too". Appealing to human convention is not sufficient to establish moral responsibility. Both of these objections demand this question:

What is sufficient and necessary for moral responsibility?

You assert that both of these are necessary:

1. determinism
2. choice

I grant you both. But are these sufficient?

Finally, I will demonstrate my argument with an example:

Replace humans with robots - not humanoid robots, either, but simple, mechanical, clunky machines. If we both agree that humans are essentially robotic, this is only a difference of number and not kind and should not compromise the argument. Now we are rid of our human prejudice towards complex, organic robots (ourselves). These robots are programmed to examine the sky, and according to weather or not the moon is showing, either kill a human child or seek food. These robots satisfy both the requirements you have mentioned: they are determined and choose from available choices. Is the robot morally responsible for the killing of the child?

If you say "yes", your position is absurd and I have nothing more to say. If you say "no", I must ask what relevant distinction exists between these hypothetical robots and humans?

[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]</p>

sweep

Ierrellus,


I will not!

[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: sweet as a nut ]</p>