RE: No soul? No free will and no responsibility then, yet the latter's essential...
August 24, 2020 at 1:03 am
(August 20, 2020 at 1:13 pm)Lawz Wrote: If there were some kind of ethereal supernatural "soul" in the picture (for which there is, of course, zero evidence) then perhaps some from of free will would be possible...
Nobody ever seems to care to demonstrate that the soul is responsible for free will in any manner. It's simply a bald assertion.
Quote:For society to function in any kind of moral way people need be held responsible for their actions (eg - crime).
As a purely deterministic entity I am incapable of allowing what I perceive as injustice to go unpunished. Do not pass "Go". Do not collect $200.
Quote:You frequently hear the line "they did it of their own free will" etc.
You're mixing philosophy and law here. Don't. It tends to go boom. In the legal sense, the term "of their own free will" is typically used to indicate that the perpetrator was sane, not impaired by chemicals or other means, and not coerced or forced.
If you deliberately shoot somebody "of your own free will" then you're likely facing murder charges.
If you are strapped into place, a gun taped to your hand, and electrodes wired to your arm in such a way that your muscles contract and cause your finger to pull the trigger then the guilty party is clearly whoever wired you into this murder machine.
Quote:Yup, it's the mother of all paradoxes, but there we have it, it's....inescapable.
This paradox only appears when you mix free will and determinism, which is clearly an error. Using either system alone produces no paradox.
