Determinism.....

[solarwave]

EVF:

I seem to have also come to the conclusion that we are not free by accident, not that I like the idea at all. Not that I am saying that I believe we don't have free will, I just happened to think of an arguement for determinism which I can't seem to refute.

So on your thinking do you think that nothing is actually good or bad and no one is blameworthy and the only reason for punishment is to stop it happening again, and the only reason to want to stop it from happening again is because we personally dont like it?

Solarwave

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I want to tell you about an arguement for determinism I thought of, and I hope someone can tell me where it goes wrong:

Why is it that someone does action X instead of Y? Why does one person rape someone and another doesn't?

Would you agree that for an action to be free and morally responsible it can't be determined or random and so must go through a thought process.

But why do we have the thought processes we have? Why do we chose to help the old lady across the road rather than mug her? Must it not be because of our genes and from outside experiences. Doesn't a man steal because his genes may have a tendency to selfishness, because his parents didn't teach morals properly, because he fell in with a bad group of friends at school, because he doesn't have much money and hasn't the will to not steal because his life experiences havn't taught him that stealing is all that bad as we think of it. How could he do anything but steal, are not our thought process a product of genes and experiences outside our control?

If you say he still have the ability to chose it still can't be a random choice since that isn't free and if you chose you chose for a reason and weight to give to different reasons comes from life experiences.

Now I dont want to believe this, so can someone prove it wrong and show me what I have missed out?