Is Moral Responsibility Compatible With Determinism?

[Alan V]

One wonders why our own modern day abacus doesn't show this emergent property, being a complex symbol processor operating on a vast landscape of relationships between it's own internal mechanism and an unending stream of exterior prompts.  While it may be true, emergentism often comes off to people as the classic step two in the three step "and then magic happens" explanation of phenomena. 

This ignores the fact that reductionism is also saying, "We don't know how all this works yet, but we think it all reduces to simple physical laws."

What exactly do you find so difficult about the idea that at certain levels of complexity we see evidence for properties which didn't exist at simpler material levels? We actually observe the effects of life, consciousness, reasoning, and so on. They change material realities in significant ways, even though they don't change the laws of physics.

In other words, I base my emergentism on observations of the effects of emergent properties.

Reductionists can (and will and do) point to that disparity and then contend that whatever it is you're saying, and however true it may be, there must then be some x that humans possess that the modern day abacus does not - and in that, we're right back round to reductionism again - and would you/could you argue with them on that point?  Is there not some clear and effectual difference between the two complex symbolic relationship processors?  

Yes, emergentists do contend that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We also contend that although reductionists will always search for reductionistic explanations, they will not likely find them when some properties only exist at levels of complexity.

In your own allusions, for example, you continually refer to complexity as that x.  Is that so different from a reductionist explaining why an abacus can't do what a pc can do?  Could we be more specific with a pc/abacus comparison?  Yes, needlingly specific, down to the parts list and circuit schem and the underlying principles of why each component works and, also, how to manufacture them.  We can't do that with the human brain..but is there some reason to suppose that it couldn't be done?   Are we saying anything by a vague reference to unspecified complexity  that actually falls outside of the reductionists wheelhouse or really does suggest imply or empower a "free will"?

No, complexity enables that x, but it is not that x in itself. The x depends on specific complex relationships, not just a lot of parts. Evolution is necessary. Otherwise piles of junk might evidence emergent properties.

That much is unclear.  Just as it's unclear how or why the addition or subtraction of free will would affect moral responsibility.  We already posit that moral responsibility exists in the case of free will -and- in it's absence, and regardless of how (or by what) our moral agency is derived.  Could be ghosts, or magic, or unspecified complexity, we may or may not have fundamental compulsions and we may or may not be able to override them, but which if any of these are actually incompatible with the notion?  

Different moral systems come to different conclusions, although there is much overlapping. That means that while you can derive a moral system without the assumption of free will, it won't be quite the same system. Some of the differences have been brought up in this discussion at a few points.

Moral agency, and thus moral responsibility, is a bit of a free rider, lol.  It doesn't have to affirm or deny the articles of any of those positions in order to provide demonstration of it's own.

I think it depends on what specifically it is affirming or denying, if I understand what you meant correctly.