(November 25, 2021 at 4:29 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: Lack of free will strongly suggests we shouldn't hold moral agents (including the pantheistic "god") accountable for their actions. But there is still room for the determinist/incompatablist to judge actions morally good or bad. The determinist/incompatabalist thinks we ought not hold people morally responsible for their choices because their choices are merely nature unfolding according to its laws.
The correct thing to do is see to the causes of immoral behavior and fix those. Otherwise, you're just getting mad at the water for fizzing after an alka-seltzer tablet has been dropped in. Don't get mad at the water for fizzing. Stop the alka-seltzer tablet from being dropped in if the fizzing bothers you so much.
But there's nothing stopping the determinist from judging fizzy water as better/worse than non-fizzy water. Of course, some hard determinists are also moral nihilists. That makes sense too. Both metaethical theories are compatible with determinism as I see it.
I’m getting the impression that people think that there are 3 systems:
1. deterministic
2. non-deterministic (random)
3. Free will
But I haven’t seen anyone give a logical explanation as to what “Free will” is suppose to be.
This is a matter of logic.
1. Either you know the system entirely and you can predict the outcome: deterministic.
2. Either you don’t know some of the system, but the system might still be totally deterministic.
3. Either the system is a mix of deterministic and random, so it makes the output of the system hard to predict to a certain level of precision, at a certain scale.
4. Either the system is totally random, and such a machine will not work properly.
I think our reality rides on #3.
Yes, we have figured out that matter behaves as a wave, and so, this makes predicting their position, their speed to a certain precision impossible.
Even radioactivity gives us a clue that matter behaves randomly, so we get the equation : N= N_start * e(-t/z)
So, I’m still not sure what you guys think free will is.
Just became a software (brain) is a set of algorithms, doesn’t mean that software is not responsible for the decisions it makes.
I don’t judge fizzy water, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes because consider them mindless (brainless) entities. They don’t have decision making circuits.