Another Free-will poll, please bear with me!

[henryp]

I keep seeing this free will vs justice argument, and I don't think it's an issue.

If we say/discover there is no free will, then the very concepts of justice and responsibility are meaningless. No one is making any justice or non justice decisions, as free will has been removed from this also. We're doing what we would do anyway, be that locking someone up or releasing them. So I see it as a non issue. You can say they go "out the window", but they are still there exactly as before, we've just found out there are no choices behind them and so are meaningless. We can't "change" anything given the information that we have no free will, unless that information is actually false.

You've said something similar in a  few threads, and I don't see it adding up.


There is external input that will change our behavior.  There is also internal analysis that can do the same.  

Determinism doesn't mean no decisions.  It means that we have no input on the decisions.  Just like a chess program 'chooses' what to do next with the goals of making the best move and winning the game, so does our brain with a whole array of objectives.  One of which, for many, is behaving rationally.  

And just like a chess program that finds a better move when it looks 8 moves deep instead of 7, our brains can find a more rational way to live by analyzing the implications of a world with no free will.

The interesting part of course, is that our brains have created the sense of self which allows us to think abstractly enough that we can imagine how we should behave in the event we are just fancy robots.  And that seems to be where your brain (for now) is departing from some other brains.  My brain says "Okay, you figured out that you have no control over your behavior.  How should we proceed?"  And while I have no 'real' say in this line of thinking, like a chess computer, I'm still going to continue down this new path in an effort to find an answer with my default objectives in mind.  That's how I was programmed.  A programming that includes the knowledge that I am programmed.

In the end, we are self-aware artificial intelligence.  It's not magical free will beings, but it's still pretty neat.

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Re Justice and Responsibility, they don't become meaningless ideas, they just are no longer applicable. Interestingly enough, we could actually maintain a similar system, and view it as holding the 'machines' responsible. Since the idea of responsibility would register in the brains as a deterrent. It's an interesting question of how we treat the programming behind the scene.