Is Moral Responsibility Compatible With Determinism?

[vulcanlogician]

First, let me point out that you are inconsistent.  If people can't prevent themselves from making certain choices then others can't prevent themselves from getting angry about it.

Second, you are defining anger as a negative, when it has its own useful place among our range of emotions.

Third, you are saying that, regardless of all subjective experiences to the contrary, we have no choice in how we interpret events.  In most cases we respond to our interpretations, not directly to "causes."

1 & 2- Sure, anger has its place. But for some of us, anger can be a prison... something that gnaws at us and prevents us from thinking clearly. In instances such as these, it may help to take a step back and see how our anger may be attached to an erroneous idea. That's all. Actually, embedded in the philosophy from which I have obtained these ideas is the idea that one should accept the anger of others, but (in pursuit of a higher wisdom) one should carefully strive to replace anger with logic within oneself. For those who aren't interested in this "higher wisdom" --they're fine. Leave them alone and let them get angry. Anger certainly has its uses.

Whether anger is good or not has been an issue for debate since Plato and Aristotle. Spinoza, my reference here, was heavily influenced by the Stoics. Long story short: the Stoics, for some decently argued reasons, thought that there was nothing that anger could do that logic couldn't. And since anger can be reckless or even dangerous, the Stoics favored logic in every circumstance.

People can prevent themselves from getting angry in a deterministic universe... it's just that there is no free will involved. People choose they just don't choose freely. Again, I'll draw upon Spinoza who noticed that we all have in our heads a mix of (what he calls) adequate and inadequate ideas.

Let's create a example and watch John Doe make his way through a deterministic universe. From the outset of our example, John (mistakenly) believes that free will is true. At one point, he discovers his wife has been cheating on him. He bitterly holds it against her. He divorces her. He puts himself to sleep every night by imagining all sorts of misfortunes falling upon her. Angry thoughts about his wife interrupt his thinking throughout the day. John Doe is miserable as a result. Then, one day, he reads Spinoza and comes to realize that everything happens due to natural processes. His wife's choice to cheat on him was due to "a substance acting upon itself." In short, he realizes that she could not have done otherwise. With this adequate idea, John Doe is able to overcome his anger.

No free will required in that example. John Doe, through a series of unfree choices, came to realize that the universe is deterministic and was henceforth able to overcome his anger. Note that (for the sake of brevity) I made the assumption that reading Spinoza led a person to instantly overcome his anger. That's unrealistic, of course. I was just trying to show how (in principle) adequate and inadequate ideas can influence a person in a deterministic universe... and I cut quite a few corners along the way.

(I'll treat your third objection later. Just remind me... but I think I may have treated it already above.)

With the bolded statement above, you are begging the question.  On the contrary, we observe material people, including ourselves, make choices.  Determinists conflate material causes with our reasons for our behaviors, when they are two distinct things.  That is reductionism, but materialism is not necessarily reductionistic.  Reasoning is an emergent property of a very complex arrangement of matter in our brains.

So determinism is a property of simple material objects, not a law of physics.

I'm not begging the question. My statement is this: scientists have not observed matter making a motion that cannot be explained by a prior cause. If every motion of matter is determined by a prior cause, then determinism is true.

You may think that some extraordinary thing happens in the brain causing matter to move because of something other than prior causes, but there is no reason to think there is, and certainly no evidence that this is the case.

[Anomalocaris]

Simple property of material objects is an artifact of the laws of physics.   It may be a complex emergent artifact of the laws of physics, but nonetheless directly outgrowth of those laws.

This is untrue because evolution depends on chance and large numbers.  Evolution is not determined by the laws of physics, only limited by them.  Again, determinism is not a law of physics.

Observing people making choices is nonsense.   We interpret what we observe to be the making of choices.   But the interpretation is untestable.   The mechanism underlying the observed phenomenon is not understood, so the grounds for the interpretation is wholly absent.   Furthermore it appears the concept of choices is part of a pre-wired cognitive framework, so our interpretation of what we observe may be a case of translation of an unknown script by assuming its contents must be the same as the only English passage we happen to have on hand.

Observing that human choices reduce to the laws of physics is nonsense.  You are making an unwarranted extrapolation based on an argument from analogy.  As you admit, appearances are on the side of free will.  Interpretation or not, we actually observe ourselves and others make choices.  That's why this is still an open issue.

You seem to think chance and large numbers somehow allows occurrences which do not follow precisely and rigorously from laws of physics.   Large number and chance is but s statistical estimate of the generalized implications of laws of physics where power to calculate the exact predictions of laws of physics is as yet lacking.    You confuse contingent unpredictability with non-determinism.

Apparence is worth nothing, so what side it is on is worth nothing.  We are program to attribute appearance of choice to things that happen to people in order make sense of the world using intuitive cognitive mechanisms that has demonstrated to be sadly inadequate to plumbing the underlying mechanism of why things happen in essentially every case where this intuitive mechanism is seriously tested.     The fact that we are programmed to attribute choice to occurrences is demonstrated by our tendency to pretend when we are young that inanimate object make choices.

But any degree of thinking that attempted to adds even the slightest hint of substance to the totally worthless appearance immediately reveals we can not demonstrate at all we have choices.    Indeed we can not conceive of even the faintest hint of any mechanism which would allow choices to be made that can not in principle be predicted through modeling of laws of chemistry and physics, other than through the wooish insinuation of “Chance” and “large number”, which is fundamentally nothing more than the usual resort to the god of the gap.  In this case the gap is created by limits on power of computation and accuracy of description.    So the appearance of choice is a total mirage without substance.

The fact that there seems to you to be a gap into which you think you can insert a belief in choice that is founded solely on your affinity towards the saccharine notion of choice is not an excuse to present that belief as anything more than sheer fantasy.

[Alan V]

Reductionism assumes everything can be reduced to material causes and the laws of physics. Emergentism assumes that the whole can be, and often is, greater than the sum of the parts. Emergentism therefore implies that satisfactory explanations for observed phenomena can only be achieved at the appropriate levels of complexity. So for instance, if you want to understand how a bird flies, taking it apart and examining the pieces will tell you only so much. Only with the pieces put together and the bird alive and conscious can it fly. Life and consciousness are both emergent. Not everything observed reduces. Instead, such properties simply disappear at a point.

So just to reiterate, again and again, that you guys are reductionists proves nothing. Material emergentism is an intellectually respectable alternative to material reductionism.

So be reductionists if you want, but just remember that you do have a choice.

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My statement is this: scientists have not observed matter making a motion that cannot be explained by a prior cause. If every motion of matter is determined by a prior cause, then determinism is true.

If you do mathematics on an abacus, do the beads "cause" you to get the right answers, or do your symbolic attributions do the trick, above and beyond the material attributes of the beads? What if the human brain works the same way, and its material attributes remain the same, just like the beads, no matter what kinds of calculations you do with it?

The symbolic processing of information -- reasoning -- is an emergent property. Reasoning makes things happen in the real world too, not just simple material causes. The two are distinctly different, even if reasoning uses material objects in its calculations.

The reason we have different words and concepts in our languages is to make important discriminations between things which are different. "Free will" is one such concept.

[vulcanlogician]

Reductionism assumes everything can be reduced to material causes and the laws of physics.  Emergentism assumes that the whole can be, and often is, greater than the sum of the parts.  Emergentism therefore implies that satisfactory explanations for observed phenomena can only be achieved at the appropriate levels of complexity.  So for instance, if you want to understand how a bird flies, taking it apart and examining the pieces will tell you only so much.  Only with the pieces put together and the bird alive and conscious can it fly.  Life and consciousness are both emergent.  Not everything observed reduces.  Instead, such properties simply disappear at a point.

So just to reiterate, again and again, that you guys are reductionists proves nothing.  Material emergentism is an intellectually respectable alternative to material reductionism.

So be reductionists if you want, but just remember that you do have a choice.

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My statement is this: scientists have not observed matter making a motion that cannot be explained by a prior cause. If every motion of matter is determined by a prior cause, then determinism is true.

If you do mathematics on an abacus, do the beads "cause" you to get the right answers, or do your symbolic attributions do the trick, above and beyond the material attributes of the beads?  What if the human brain works the same way, and its material attributes remain the same, just like the beads, no matter what kinds of calculations you do with it?

The symbolic processing of information -- reasoning -- is an emergent property.  Reasoning makes things happen in the real world too, not just simple material causes.  The two are distinctly different, even if reasoning uses material objects in its calculations.

The reason we have different words and concepts in our languages is to make important discriminations between things which are different.  "Free will" is one such concept.

I think you're missing something basic, Alan. I think it is you who are begging the question by postulating a consciousness/will that is nondeterministic and then shoving it into your example. Then you say "ha! You see? Determinism is false." Complexity of a thing, whether it be a brain or a bird's wing, in no way allows it to circumvent the laws of nature or be a cause unto itself.

[The Grand Nudger]

I have been told that absent an ability to do otherwise is essential to say a person is morally responsible (or in other areas, though I'll concentrate on morality) as this rests on "ought" statements. So "you should not murder" etc. As ought implies can, there is a problem with determinism. This would include both compatibilist and incompatibilist views, I'd assume. What do others here think?

There's already a point where desert is modified even if we don't assume determinism. 

We already accept that it at least can be the case that a person is incapable of not doing some Bad Thing™.  That it can be the case that the actions of a second and/or third party are more properly the cause of some Bad Thing™.  That it can be the case that the momentum of circumstance predicates a specific Bad Thing™ as an outcome. 

From the other end...unless it's impossible to modify or compel human behavior (free will or no free will) then no, there's no fundamental problem between moral responsibility and determinism.  Even compelled, we still own our acts.  When we find that this is the case, we modify desert by accounting for it, but not (generally) by positing that it washes the slate entirely clean.  We assume that people simply can be compelled, and further that our oughts are in the compelling set...but we don't assume that they're equally compelling to all or that all could be compelled specifically towards them.

In the most sympathetic instance, we'd no longer trust the offending person - a judgement unto itself in which free will is completely irrelevant.  Whether a person chooses to lie or lie's compulsively, they are a liar (you can repeat this with any dishonorific - thief, murderer, rapist, etc).  To an extent, our own inability to meticulously distinguish between whether a person did some horrid thing on purpose or by weight of circumstance (or on purpose because of the weight of circumstance, lol) only deepens that mistrust.  Maybe they don't even know why they did it.  Obviously these distinctions can get weedy, and can be gamed, and can backfire.  It's the distinction between a crime of passion and a premeditated murder.  

Ultimately, all that's required for determinism and moral responsibility to gel is for human beings to be capable of making choices, which we are, regardless of whether we freely make them.  Our moral agency is compromised at so many levels in so many ways that we really don't need to refer to determinism to effect the same scenario in a freely willed world.

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* with regards to something Vulcan mentioned, our justice system (loosely based on our moral principles) is already a shitshow.  We already know that prisons are full of people who are there for less than solid reasons - and I'm talking about guilty people, here.  We put potheads and other assorted addicts in cages.  Financial crimes that ruin dozens (even millions) of families lives at once are treated more lightly than knocking over a convenience store.  Punitive sentencing directly correlates with increased criminality and rates of recidivism but has no known preventative effect.  Somehow, our prisons are filling up with a certain shade of lipstick.

Does the addition of a free will justify or explain any of that?  Howsabout hard determinism?  No in both cases. This is just my opinion...but, alot of the things people use as examples of problems between a deterministic universe and moral agency and desert are problems more specific to the example. If hard determinism is right then the way we treat prisoners is wrong. If hard determinism is wrong, then the way we treat prisoners is wrong. The way we treat prisoners probably isn't the best representative of a determinists ethical theory, ofc, lol. The ground level view of this stuff is deontological, intentionally simplified - but at a granular level of detail I'm not aware of the issue of will being a problem for any given determinists ethics. Determinism is baked into consequentialism, for example. That doesn't make people hop up and down and say, "but-but-but determinism?!?". Mostly, because we think it's true. We think that actions have consequences, which is to say that states of affairs have some cause..and that we can dial the conceptual clock forward to see the outcome of our decisions. This is how we do consequentialist ethics. It proceeds directly from determinism. No apparent problem. What, then, would the apparent problem be if determinism where also true of the brain? So what if we don't freely choose our actions? It's true that we don't but why would this be a problem?

The entire business of deontological ethics (and legal code) is to constrain your choices in the first place. We don't want people freely making moral choices, lol.

[Alan V]

Complexity of a thing, whether it be a brain or a bird's wing, in no way allows it to circumvent the laws of nature or be a cause unto itself.

How in the world could a bird flying or a human brain circumvent the laws of nature? Nothing circumvents the laws of nature, but I assert that determinism is NOT one of those laws. Determinism is a property and properties change with complexity. You underestimate what's possible with materialism.

[vulcanlogician]

Complexity of a thing, whether it be a brain or a bird's wing, in no way allows it to circumvent the laws of nature or be a cause unto itself.

How in the world could a bird flying or a human brain circumvent the laws of nature?  Nothing circumvents the laws of nature, but I assert that determinism is NOT one of those laws.  Determinism is a property and properties change with complexity.  You underestimate what's possible with materialism.

Determinism isn't a property. It's a metaphysical theory. I think you mean "the laws of cause and effect." The laws of cause and effect are presumed by all the sciences. If you take issue with those, then you agree with this guy. But most of us don't agree with that guy (at least as far as his ideas about causation go). Hence, determinism seems very plausible to some of us.

In metaphysics, you seldom get a clear, cut-and-dried answer with anything. Therefore, the best way to approach them is to try to understand each side of the argument as deeply as you can. From there, try to pick a theory which you find most likely.

[Acrobat]

No. It isn't compatible.

Do you think consent is compatible with determinism?

Is there a difference between a consensual action like consensual sex, vs coerced or forced actions?

I would say in the realm of what is meant by "consent" there exist the idea of responsibility.

[Alan V]

How in the world could a bird flying or a human brain circumvent the laws of nature?  Nothing circumvents the laws of nature, but I assert that determinism is NOT one of those laws.  Determinism is a property and properties change with complexity.  You underestimate what's possible with materialism.

Determinism isn't a property. It's a metaphysical theory. I think you mean "the laws of cause and effect." The laws of cause and effect are presumed by all the sciences. If you take issue with those, then you agree with this guy. But most of us don't agree with that guy (at least as far as his ideas about causation go). Hence, determinism seems very plausible to some of us.

In metaphysics, you seldom get a clear, cut-and-dried answer with anything. Therefore, the best way to approach them is to try to understand each side of the argument as deeply as you can. From there, try to pick a theory which you find most likely.

I obviously need to read more about philosophy at some point.

If determinism is a metaphysical theory, then determinists should have no problem acknowledging another metaphysical theory.  However, in my experience determinists seem to have a hard time acknowledging emergentism as an alternative.  Why is that, if they don't think determinism is inherent to materialism?

From my point of view, free will decisions depend on reasoning, which in turn depends on the symbolic processing of information in human brains.  What law of cause and effect does the symbolic processing of information violate?  As far as I can see, none at all.  Material cause and effect still works perfectly well at its own level of complexity, and nothing changes that when you add a much greater level of complexity and free will is possible.  As I pointed out with my abacus analogy, nothing changes the material properties of the beads.  Their new properties emerge because of the meanings attributed to their relative positions, so meanings require relationships between multiple beads.  The movements of the beads are still materially caused, even while the answers they provide are derived by their symbolic attributes.  At minimum, two different levels are involved, not just one.  The rules of one level simply don't apply to the rules of another, when much more complexity is involved.

It's like the different between making meaningless noises and making music.  Music emerges from the relationships between the notes and instruments, whereas random noises have no intentional relationships.

[The Grand Nudger]

One wonders why our own modern day abacus doesn't show this emergent property, being a complex symbol processor operating on a vast landscape of relationships between it's own internal mechanism and an unending stream of exterior prompts.  While it may be true, emergentism often comes off to people as the classic step two in the three step "and then magic happens" explanation of phenomena. 

Reductionists can (and will and do) point to that disparity and then contend that whatever it is you're saying, and however true it may be, there must then be some x that humans possess that the modern day abacus does not - and in that, we're right back round to reductionism again - and would you/could you argue with them on that point?  Is there not some clear and effectual difference between the two complex symbolic relationship processors?  

In your own allusions, for example, you continually refer to complexity as that x.  Is that so different from a reductionist explaining why an abacus can't do what a pc can do?  Could we be more specific with a pc/abacus comparison?  Yes, needlingly specific, down to the parts list and circuit schem and the underlying principles of why each component works and, also, how to manufacture them.  We can't do that with the human brain..but is there some reason to suppose that it couldn't be done?   Are we saying anything by a vague reference to unspecified complexity  that actually falls outside of the reductionists wheelhouse or really does suggest imply or empower a "free will"?

That much is unclear.  Just as it's unclear how or why the addition or subtraction of free will would affect moral responsibility. We already posit that moral responsibility exists in the case of free will -and- in it's absence, and regardless of how (or by what) our moral agency is derived. Could be ghosts, or magic, or unspecified complexity, we may or may not have fundamental compulsions and we may or may not be able to override them, but which if any of these are actually incompatible with the notion?

Moral agency, and thus moral responsibility, is a bit of a free rider, lol. It doesn't have to affirm or deny the articles of any of those positions in order to provide demonstration of it's own.