RE: Is Moral Responsibility Compatible With Determinism?
May 28, 2019 at 9:37 pm
(This post was last modified: May 28, 2019 at 9:39 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(May 28, 2019 at 8:55 pm)mcc1789 Wrote: I take it you don't agree with those who claim imprisoning people etc. is wrong if they aren't morally responsible for their actions. Or those like C. S. Lewis who felt this would lead to treating people even worse, e.g. like mental patients instead of moral actors.
Imprisoning people is a way of preventing them from doing further harm. So I'm not against it. Some people are dangerous and interpersonally destructive.
Furthermore, the issue is hardly settled. Free will may be true. Our intuitions scream that it is. As I read in an article recently, one strike against determinism is that it is impossible to act as if it were true. There are a plentitude of counterarguments to thrust at this: Spinoza would say that a person who stops making choices in life because determinism is true has an "inadequate idea" causing him not to act properly.
People are moral actors, they just aren't free (according to the determinist). Viewing people as some kind of zombie is another inadequate idea. It's like saying that the planet Earth is "just some filthy rock" upon discovering that it's not at the center of the universe. It's like saying human beings are "just some kind of primitive ape" upon realizing that evolution is true. No! There is a better way to look at things! Understanding that the Earth orbits the Sun is more information. In no way does it diminish the majesty or beauty of planet Earth. Understanding that we evolved from hominids is more information. We can better understand who and what we are by discovering our evolutionary past. Likewise, understanding that a person's actions have exterior causes is more information. It doesn't diminish who and what they are. They still endure pain and suffering, and an ethicist is free to pronounce that bad... and to pronounce it good when they suffer less.
Look at it this way: criminals tend to come from impoverished backgrounds. We can recognize (on a macro scale) that poverty has a causal relation to criminal behavior. If it is possible, isn't it better to repair the thing that causes the behavior rather than severely punish the people who are caused to act criminally by their life circumstances?
If determinism is true, our justice system is truly an evil and brutal affair.
It's food for thought, anyway. I am in no way convinced that determinism is true. But of all the metaphysical theories concerning free will, it seems the most plausible. After all, all matter that scientists observe obey the laws of cause and effect. We are made of matter. Therefore, the motion of the matter in our brains and bodies must also obey those same laws of cause and effect. There is no evidence for Kant's "noumenal self" and all bringing quantum physics into the argument does is add an element of randomness to the picture. It doesn't imply free will of any kind. That's why I tend toward determinism.
Which metaphysical theory do you find most plausible, btw?
