RE: Does Free Will actually exist? Is there a way to tell?
January 27, 2015 at 8:49 pm
(This post was last modified: January 27, 2015 at 9:04 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Same answer as I gave Prof, Iatia. Is it not your hand that pushes the knife? Or, appraoched from a more familiar angle, with free will intact - when you are unintentionally the cause of damage, no choice made by you to do damage... are you not still responsible, will we not hold you accountable? We already understand the concept of responsibility/culpability without intent...so why would that somehow change if I removed "free will"?
We might change our idea of what to do when we assign responsibility, sure....but we already assign it regardless of whether or not one made some "free will" choice to do this or that. What changes, as Ras(estsu!) is fond of reminding people, is more likely the notion of moral desert. You can imagine a situation in which you don't deserve this or that consequence based on diminished or non-existent intent, which may be true..but it won't necessarily change how we handle you after that fact. Even if we accept absolute compulsion...as in the case of some nutjob who just can't stop stabbing people - can't..not won't...can't-, we don't wring our hands and say "Well gee fellas, he has no choice so I guess we'll just let him go" ....we lock him up, regardless of whether or not he has a choice. Sometimes we accept that people absolutely have chosen to do something that one or many of us may find objectionable, such as killing another person. We decide, even with the choice, not to assign responsibility for their actions on them...and instead...assign responsibility for the event and subsequent action to the aggressor...and call it "self defense".
We already do all of this, our system and concepts of responsibility already work without any need to refer to the "free will" of some party. -Then-...at the other end of this..we certainly aren't interested in the "free will" of the convicted..are we?
We might change our idea of what to do when we assign responsibility, sure....but we already assign it regardless of whether or not one made some "free will" choice to do this or that. What changes, as Ras(estsu!) is fond of reminding people, is more likely the notion of moral desert. You can imagine a situation in which you don't deserve this or that consequence based on diminished or non-existent intent, which may be true..but it won't necessarily change how we handle you after that fact. Even if we accept absolute compulsion...as in the case of some nutjob who just can't stop stabbing people - can't..not won't...can't-, we don't wring our hands and say "Well gee fellas, he has no choice so I guess we'll just let him go" ....we lock him up, regardless of whether or not he has a choice. Sometimes we accept that people absolutely have chosen to do something that one or many of us may find objectionable, such as killing another person. We decide, even with the choice, not to assign responsibility for their actions on them...and instead...assign responsibility for the event and subsequent action to the aggressor...and call it "self defense".
We already do all of this, our system and concepts of responsibility already work without any need to refer to the "free will" of some party. -Then-...at the other end of this..we certainly aren't interested in the "free will" of the convicted..are we?
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