RE: Not Convinced Determinism Makes Sense of Moral Responsibility. Convince Me It Does
December 4, 2013 at 5:44 pm
(This post was last modified: December 4, 2013 at 5:46 pm by Mudhammam.)
Thanks for the responses, I have found them very thoughtful and satisfactory. I would like to clarify one point made by genkaus. You said,
Can you expound more on the part of our programming that is alterable by ourselves? In a deterministic universe, it doesn't seem that any of us could actually *choose* to alter anything as our illusion of choosing to do so is also part of the chain of causality which we ultimately have no control over. So how is this different from external constraints or biological conditions?
I'd like to switch gears slightly, from determinism-morality to determinism-rationality. My brother, who is a fundamentalist Christian, put forth this argument:
"Naturalism is the belief or idea that nature is all that exist (and no intelligent being exists). On naturalism, laws and constants randomly came into being that could sustain life (against odds of 1 to billions), simultaneously with space, time, and energy that was determined to become mass (form stars), then a life sustaining planet, then life from chemistry (the odds of this are presently unknown but estimated at zero on probability since there is no knowledge of how abiogenesis could even take place or if it did), then life developed into life with consciousness, and then conscious life with an abstract idea (naturalism is true), that you assert is justifiable to believe. But if you hold this view, you must also hold that such an idea arises as the result of merely determined physical forces (from the origin of the universe), in which case there would be no grounds for holding this particular worldview to be particularly true but excellent grounds for holding it to be highly likely to be false since you believe that it is the mere result of determined chemical reactions in the brain presenting to you your belief. So it seems you have a defeater for your belief on your very beliefs. Your grounds for naturalism being true, are sufficient grounds for holding that naturalism is almost certainly false. You say that naturalism is true, but that not only seems extremely unlikely on the face of it, the idea that naturalism is true is a determined belief that is the result of non-rational chemical reactions that brought you to that belief." He quotes C.S. Lewis as basically making the same point: "The point, of course, is that naturalism is precisely a worldview that entails our reasoning processes being the product of irrational causes. One’s beliefs are determined, not by following an argument to its logical conclusion, but by the chemical processes in the brain, or the psychological processes in the subconscious; in which case, they are the product of irrational causes."
Now I don't personally find this argument to be very strong and I can share the response I gave him if anyone is interested, but I'm curious to hear how others would answer this.
(December 4, 2013 at 6:23 am)genkaus Wrote: So, in the end, while your existence is still deterministic in nature, there are two parts to your programming - one which is alterable by yourself and one which is a given. Any action attributable to the alterable component can have a moral dimension. Given this, the idea of free-will that I find relevant to moral responsibility is freedom from any unalterable factors such as external constraints or biological conditions.
Can you expound more on the part of our programming that is alterable by ourselves? In a deterministic universe, it doesn't seem that any of us could actually *choose* to alter anything as our illusion of choosing to do so is also part of the chain of causality which we ultimately have no control over. So how is this different from external constraints or biological conditions?
I'd like to switch gears slightly, from determinism-morality to determinism-rationality. My brother, who is a fundamentalist Christian, put forth this argument:
"Naturalism is the belief or idea that nature is all that exist (and no intelligent being exists). On naturalism, laws and constants randomly came into being that could sustain life (against odds of 1 to billions), simultaneously with space, time, and energy that was determined to become mass (form stars), then a life sustaining planet, then life from chemistry (the odds of this are presently unknown but estimated at zero on probability since there is no knowledge of how abiogenesis could even take place or if it did), then life developed into life with consciousness, and then conscious life with an abstract idea (naturalism is true), that you assert is justifiable to believe. But if you hold this view, you must also hold that such an idea arises as the result of merely determined physical forces (from the origin of the universe), in which case there would be no grounds for holding this particular worldview to be particularly true but excellent grounds for holding it to be highly likely to be false since you believe that it is the mere result of determined chemical reactions in the brain presenting to you your belief. So it seems you have a defeater for your belief on your very beliefs. Your grounds for naturalism being true, are sufficient grounds for holding that naturalism is almost certainly false. You say that naturalism is true, but that not only seems extremely unlikely on the face of it, the idea that naturalism is true is a determined belief that is the result of non-rational chemical reactions that brought you to that belief." He quotes C.S. Lewis as basically making the same point: "The point, of course, is that naturalism is precisely a worldview that entails our reasoning processes being the product of irrational causes. One’s beliefs are determined, not by following an argument to its logical conclusion, but by the chemical processes in the brain, or the psychological processes in the subconscious; in which case, they are the product of irrational causes."
Now I don't personally find this argument to be very strong and I can share the response I gave him if anyone is interested, but I'm curious to hear how others would answer this.
