morality is subjective and people don't have free will

[Mister Agenda]

So how can you justify being angry at the person who rapes, kills, steals, lies, cheats, is conservative, is religious, likes Trump, IS Trump, etc etc? Am I missing something?

I don't think I'm really in the categories you're addressing, and sorry if this has already been dealt with, but how is a person without free will supposed to act any other way?

[brewer]

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bold mine

This, thanks Jor, couldn't have said it better.

Factors in your control does not mean you freely chose them.  Just that you control them.  Control =/= choice.

My alternative, control does not always equal choice. Sometimes it does, especially if there are multiple choices. You get to freely choose between them. Or you can choose with in the parameters of the factor(s). I will never believe that I don't have free will. I do believe that my free will is often limited, either in choices or application.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The second point is, that as a hard determinist, I don't believe in free will.  

So just to be clear, you believe in hard determinism not because it is true but because the initial conditions of the universe make you think that it is.

[Whateverist]

Maybe she just believes in hard determinism because that is her nature? Could our reasons for what we think be part of the same illusion which make us think we choose how we act. I'm wired differently, I am resigned to accepting a highly constrained form of free will. Oh look, my fingers are typing something. Think I'll read what I'm saying ...

[Catholic_Lady]

So how can you justify being angry at the person who rapes, kills, steals, lies, cheats, is conservative, is religious, likes Trump, IS Trump, etc etc? Am I missing something?

I don't think I'm really in the categories you're addressing, and sorry if this has already been dealt with, but how is a person without free will supposed to act any other way?

I just figured if an individual has the knowledge that someone had 0 choice over what they did, she/he wouldn't feel angry at the person for having done it. 

But Aroura already explained that while the anger does happen regardless, she acknowledges that the anger is not rational or justified.

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Factors in your control does not mean you freely chose them.  Just that you control them.  Control =/= choice.

My alternative, control does not always equal choice. Sometimes it does, especially if there are multiple choices. You get to freely choose between them. Or you can choose with in the parameters of the factor(s). I will never believe that I don't have free will. I do believe that my free will is often limited, either in choices or application.

This is my stance as well. Free will does not mean all choices are always available to everyone. But it does mean someone has the option to choose between those that are.

[Aroura]

I've often wondered, do people who think they have free-will think animals do as well? If you put a choice of different cat foods in front of a cat, can it freely chose? Or is it determined. What about a pig? A lizard? A fish? A worm?

At what point is a brain complex enough to produce this invisible quality of free will?

And if any of those animals has free-will, are you ok taking that free-will away by force, i.e. killing it? Why or why not?

Serious questions, not trying to lead, just going through some of the things I used to wonder.

[Catholic_Lady]

I think animals still do have some level of choice, especially the more sentient ones. I could be wrong about that though.

But I definitely think they are much more driven by instinct and more automatic programming than we are. We have the ability to think and rationalize in ways that they can't.

[Whateverist]

I've often wondered, do people who think they have free-will think animals do as well?  If you put a choice of different cat foods in front of a cat, can it freely chose?  

Good question.  In my own case, I'm always free to choose the food I prefer though of course I'm not free to choose which tastes I'll end of preferring.  Those I just have to discover.  But once I figure out what I prefer, I hit that sucker hard.  Well, so long as it is healthy enough and fits with weight goals.  Of course my weight goals too are a matter of the wildest luck in terms of the environments I've previously encountered.  Like taking that healthy eating course at Kaiser.  I seemed to have chosen to enroll in that and to follow up by going to each meeting of my own free will.  But really who knows what all circumstances might have led up to those 'choices'.  Hope that helps.

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I think animals still do have some level of choice, especially the more sentient ones. I could be wrong about that though.

But I definitely think they are much more driven by instinct and more automatic programming than we are. We have the ability to think and rationalize in ways that they can't.

I actually think we are very much just like our animals in the ways I bolded.  We just overlay the process with a narrative which paints us in a more favorable light.  It helps to control the narrative.  My poor dogs have no choice about that.

[Aroura]

Thanks you so far for the answers.

Ok, if free-will is based on the ability to think and rationalize, do advanced computer programs have free-will?  Or can they ever, in the future?

For instance,  Watson.
When it was playing Jeopardy!, the programmers could guess the answers, but there guesses were often wrong.  What I mean is, even though they created Watson, they could not predict his behavior with 100% accuracy (nor anything near it).

Essentially, Watson was created in order to think up creative solutions to tricky problems and questions.  It must "chose" what it thinks is the best option or answer based on the information and programming it has, but it still choses.

So, does Watson have free will?  Since he is choosing from a multiple selection of possible answers?  Or is he just responding to his programming in unexpected ways, due to the complexity of his programming and the information he has access to?

[Angrboda]

The second point is, that as a hard determinist, I don't believe in free will.  

So just to be clear, you believe in hard determinism not because it is true but because the initial conditions of the universe make you think that it is.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. My computer hard reset after a lightning strike yesterday. When it rebooted, it stopped at a BIOS screen and informed me that the power supply had experienced a power surge. This was no doubt due to various memory cells in the machine storing that information and computing what that meant. This was all determined to happen as soon as the lightning strike occurred. That the message from my computer about the power surge followed deterministic steps to its display does not mean that a power surge 'didn't' happen. It was both true and the initial conditions determined that the computer would come to that conclusion.