morality is subjective and people don't have free will

[emjay]

Your conclusions are true, HAH.

Yes, they are.

True in what sense within the confines of free will?

True in the sense of true. Do I have to quote the dictionary?

Incompatabilist, Libertarian Contra-causal free will isn't even a logically coherent concept. It's basically magic. But good luck with believing in magic. Oh wait... you already do.

 That only means that they are true to you.

Bullshit.

To quote Richard Dawkins "You mean true for you is different from true for anybody else? It’s got to be either true or not true."

Just because they exist as a philosophy position does not make them true.

Right back at you. Although you may have noticed that no serious philosopher believes in the kind of free will you believe in and the kind of free will most people believe in: i.e contra-causal, magical, libertarian free will. And the ones that do are also almost all religious and believe in souls.

And of course... having a soul is not going to defeat the argument.

From what I've read fatalism can be a part of determinism.

So? Holy crap you're bad at arguing. Just because it can be doesn't mean it always is. Dogs can be animals but not all animals are dogs. Fatalists are determinists but not all determinists are fatalists.

How many times have I heard you say I can't or I'm not responsible or it's not my fault or I can't help it or some one/thing else is to blame. You are every bit the fatalist.

Come back when you understand the difference between fatalism and determinism. I already said that legal, social and practical moral responsibility exists. But that's merely holding people responsible as if they're responsible because it's better for everyone that way. It doesn't make the retarded magical notion of humans having motives that are outside of the causal stream any more true.

Libertarian Incompatabilism=Our motives are not part of the causal stream. They supervene it (as if by magic).

Fatalism=Our motives don't exist or if they do they have no real power over us so why not just give up? (X will either happen or not happen and what you do has no bearing over it).

Hard Incompatabilism=If our motives are determined they are part of the causal stream but they still exist and they have full power in motivating us (hence why they're called out motives).

Compatabilism=If our motives are determined they are part of the causal stream but they still exist and they have full power in motivating us (hence why they're called our motives)... but despite the fact that our motives are determined and part of the causal stream let's just redefine ordinary willpower, call it "free will" and behave as if the legal definition of free will (i.e. "Did you sign that contract of your own free will?") has anything to with the classic philosophical problem of free will even though it doesn't. Let's take the approach a theologian does with God. Let's just behave as if free will not existing but it being useful to behave as if it does is the same thing as it actually existing even though it isn't. Thereby misleading many laypeople into thinking that the Libertarian free will they believe in is justified even though it's not even logically coherent and it's basically akin to believing in magic.

Hard Incompatabilism is the only reasonable position.

Explain "my motives are part of the causal stream". What motives?

All my motives.

In case you missed it the first time here is Galen Strawson's knockdown argument against free will:

In the free will debate, Strawson holds that there is a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, whether determinism is true or not. He argues for this position with what he calls his "basic argument", which aims to show that no-one is ever ultimately morally responsible for their actions, and hence that no one has free will in the sense that usually concerns us. In its simplest form, the Basic Argument runs thus:

1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
2. To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
3. But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
4. So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do.

This argument resembles Arthur Schopenhauer's position in On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, summarised by E. F. J. Payne as the "law of motivation, which states that a definite course of action inevitably ensues on a given character and motive"

And here's his response in video form, from a documentary about Free Will. This video also includes the interviewer's failed attempts to defeat Strawson's argument.





Hopefully if you read that argument and watch that video with full attention and without confirmation bias.... you will stop believing people's motives have magical powers that can transcend causality.

I agree with you Hammy about determinism vs fatalism. The way I see it is this... the 'normal' decision-making process in life... ie that which occurs when we don't factor in considerations about the clockwork universe... is determined, just as everything else is. But fatalism... ie thinking something like 'what will be will be so therefore there's no point in doing anything'... comes about when people (erroneously, imo) neglect to realise that 'what will be will be' includes that normal decision-making process. So by factoring in the clockwork universe in that way to their decisions, all they are doing is making more decisions which are just as determined as they were when the clockwork universe wasn't factored in. So both choices and their preceding decision-making processes are equally causal/determined, but fatalism, and it's implications on the course of a life, comes from, imo, a bad decision... one that assumes that 'what will be will be' will somehow magically happen without you making choices, leading to apathy... but that apathy... and how it affects choices... is just another decision-making process going forward. It's just as determined as the other but leads to drastically different causal outcomes than if that conclusion hadn't been reached in the past.