A thing about religious (and other) people and the illusion of free will

[Thumpalumpacus]

What do you think parents do in raising children if not shape and form their personalities? Use your head, man. Or do I need to connect the dots for you? Sheesh.

But that doesn't even happen?

lol, you're clearly not a parent. But overall, you not reproducing is probably a good thing. Carry on.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But that doesn't even happen?

lol, you're clearly not a parent. But overall, you not reproducing is probably a good thing. Carry on.

Ahriman, you've been THUMPED!

[Angrboda]

Because desire isn't objective.  If you think that something subjective can also be objective, then I'd say you have problems that I can't fix.

Drinking while driving isn't an aspect of the drinking, it's an aspect of the driving, so, no, we don't imprison people for drinking.  That's why you snuck the word related in there.  You're just engaged in equivocation now.

Basing something solely on desire is not objective, but it isn't clear that we are incapable of desiring things because of some fact about that thing, rather than some fact which is only about ourselves.  No matter where we fall on that issue, though, I hope I never come across as a person who thinks that our legal system is a paragon of objectivity.  I'm absolutely certain that a great many of our laws and the consequences for breaking them are fundamentally relative - and at least some are wholly subjective with the perfect example being a law bought and paid for that isn't in the interests of the state or anyone else.  

Only if none of it is subjective. Subjectivity is like piss in the pool. Once it's in there you can't get it out. There is no such thing as a fact about a thing that can make it desirable in and of itself.

I'm pointing out that we do these things - not that any of them are equivalent or insisting that they are all completely objective in their aims or their enforcement- a quick glance at the statutes and outcomes demonstrates that they are not.  You can also be thrown in jail for littering...which is waaaaay down there on the "is this gonna get a bystander killed unless we jail this person" scale.  We might wonder whether drunk drivers or litterers should see consequences closer to an arsonists, or whether a litterer and a drunk driver are over punished and an arsonist is under punished.  Smoking causes all sorts of issues - but the kind of smoking that does that isn't the kind that we criminalized.  What happened there?  All good questions.  Why we prevent arsonists from setting fires...by imprisoning them if need be... imo, less so.  To prevent fires.  Why do we want there to be less fires....likely...something true about fires.

What purpose do you think is served by pointing them out? It seems a pointless digression even if you could get clear of the fallacies.

All of that in mind, I can't spot anything untrue, or that would be made untrue by free will being illusory, about who is responsible for a crime that they have committed.  Free will or no free will we can certainly catch an arsonist and know they did it.  So I personally can't agree with the idea that, absent free will, we can't assign blame.  That our legal system just could not work, though I do agree that retributive justice would be groundless.   OFC, as I mentioned, it seems indefensible either way.  I don't think it fits realist ethics.  Hold you, and literally, as the responsible party?  Sure.  More than that is elective.  There are definitely people who want retribution and retributive justice, I'm familiar with the desire myself - but I still don't think it has a place in law or ethics.

No, nothing about fires themselves leads to a justification for holding arsonists accountable. It is solely a fact about a subjective state. Free will seems necessary if we are to hold people accountable for what are in other people's minds, but you seem to think that lacking an intention relevant to you, I am somehow responsible for what is or isn't in your mind or someone else's mind. That's why the just so facts necessarily including subjective ones is a problem without free will.

I'll give you a tip. This all traces back to your being confused about the nature of the moral system you have endorsed.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Maybe he should read up on Scientology. Or the Unification Church. Or the Mormons. Or…you get the picture.

Boru

None of those groups were ever able to make someone do something against his or her will.

With ten minutes and a butane torch, anyone can be made to act against their will. Psychological manipulation takes longer, but the results are the same.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Seen it done in under a minute. Watching someone get tested. The White Mice were fugly like that.

[The Grand Nudger]

Only if none of it is subjective.  Subjectivity is like piss in the pool.  Once it's in there you can't get it out.  There is no such thing as a fact about a thing that can make it desirable in and of itself.

I guess that's one opinion.  Is it a fact?  Is it free of the piss in your pool?  Mind you, -I- don't demand that you be somehow free of piss in your pool in order for your opinion to be factual.  I think you can probably still communicate at least some facts from a pissy pool.

What purpose do you think is served by pointing them out?  It seems a pointless digression even if you could get clear of the fallacies.  

If you'll recall, the comments of mine that you weighed in on were in response to a position on blame, retributive justice, and free will posed by a guy named Robert Sopalsky.  Another poster had mentioned that positions like his would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Maybe so for retributive justice.  I'd call that part of the bathwater, not the baby.  

Who can we blame for arson?  The arsonist.

How can we justify imprisoning or committing people who commit arson?  To prevent them from starting more fires.  

Why don't we imprison or commit people who haven't committed arson?  Because that won't more prevent fires.  

Why do we imprison or commit arsonists for starting fires when we don't imprison or commit smokers for smoking (drinking, jaywalking, debt, littering, etc).  We do.

I haven't needed free will to explain or justify any of this.  

No, nothing about fires themselves leads to a justification for holding arsonists accountable.  It is solely a fact about a subjective state.  Free will seems necessary if we are to hold people accountable for what are in other people's minds, but you seem to think that lacking an intention relevant to you, I am somehow responsible for what is or isn't in your mind or someone else's mind.  That's why the just so facts necessarily including subjective ones is a problem without free will.

I'll give you a tip.  This all traces back to your being confused about the nature of the moral system you have endorsed.

No one freely wills themselves into a fender bender, but people often pay for it.  I may not want to pay for it.  I may not like paying for it.  However, I can see that I should pay for it.  I did the damage.  I'm responsible.  I'm accountable. 

More than this, as in retributive justice - for example...is, as I stated above, not something that I think is objective or arising from any objective place.  So if you mean "hold you accountable" in some way other than acknowledge that you did it and believe that you should make or be made to make whatever reparations you're capable of.  Hold you accountable as in punish you until I feel better or society feels better - then I wholeheartedly agree.  There's nothing about being an arsonist (freely willed or otherwise, in a world where free will exists or where it doesn't) that objectively leads to those sorts of "justice" schemes.  Honestly, I don't think that they're justice at all, objective, subjective, whatever.  

Bringing me right back around to Sopalsky and Istvans criticism.  I don't think that conceiving of people as essentially bioautomata prevents us from doing a great deal of the effective work our justice system does.  If you take the suggestion seriously you might conclude that if we're being told that a person is in some sense not responsible for the arson they committed (some sense outside of..you know, having themselves committed it) - that all we are is a bundle of compulsions and exterior circumstances and preexisting routines.  That his poor circumstances made him this way - that his shitty life made him this way - that his abhorrent culture made him this way...that's an even better argument for locking a person up than "they just freely chose arson one day" would be.  He's fire starting bioautomata - might wanna put him in a fire retardant cell. He didn't make a mistake, it wasn't because he was ignorant. Arson is, apparently, what that person is. Maybe, if people can be made a certain way, they can also be unmade that way. A justification for rehabilitation.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Seen it done in under a minute. Watching someone get tested. The White Mice were fugly like that.

I have it on good authority that sometimes just the threat is enough. You offer to set someone’s petzl on fire - and convince them you mean it - they get really cooperative really quickly.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Seen it done in under a minute. Watching someone get tested. The White Mice were fugly like that.

I have it on good authority that sometimes just the threat is enough. You offer to set someone’s petzl on fire - and convince them you mean it - they get really cooperative really quickly.

Boru

After reading the Malleus Maleficarum I have no doubt there are things that work.

[ShinyCrystals]

Only if none of it is subjective.  Subjectivity is like piss in the pool.  Once it's in there you can't get it out.  There is no such thing as a fact about a thing that can make it desirable in and of itself.

I guess that's one opinion.  Is it a fact?  Is it free of the piss in your pool?  Mind you, -I- don't demand that you be somehow free of piss in your pool in order for your opinion to be factual.  I think you can probably still communicate at least some facts from a pissy pool.

What purpose do you think is served by pointing them out?  It seems a pointless digression even if you could get clear of the fallacies.  

If you'll recall, the comments of mine that you weighed in on were in response to a position on blame, retributive justice, and free will posed by a guy named Robert Sopalsky.  Another poster had mentioned that positions like his would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Maybe so for retributive justice.  I'd call that part of the bathwater, not the baby.  

Who can we blame for arson?  The arsonist.

How can we justify imprisoning or committing people who commit arson?  To prevent them from starting more fires.  

Why don't we imprison or commit people who haven't committed arson?  Because that won't more prevent fires.  

Why do we imprison or commit arsonists for starting fires when we don't imprison or commit smokers for smoking (drinking, jaywalking, debt, littering, etc).  We do.

I haven't needed free will to explain or justify any of this.  

No, nothing about fires themselves leads to a justification for holding arsonists accountable.  It is solely a fact about a subjective state.  Free will seems necessary if we are to hold people accountable for what are in other people's minds, but you seem to think that lacking an intention relevant to you, I am somehow responsible for what is or isn't in your mind or someone else's mind.  That's why the just so facts necessarily including subjective ones is a problem without free will.

I'll give you a tip.  This all traces back to your being confused about the nature of the moral system you have endorsed.

No one freely wills themselves into a fender bender, but people often pay for it.  I may not want to pay for it.  I may not like paying for it.  However, I can see that I should pay for it.  I did the damage.  I'm responsible.  I'm accountable. 

More than this, as in retributive justice - for example...is, as I stated above, not something that I think is objective or arising from any objective place.  So if you mean "hold you accountable" in some way other than acknowledge that you did it and believe that you should make or be made to make whatever reparations you're capable of.  Hold you accountable as in punish you until I feel better or society feels better - then I wholeheartedly agree.  There's nothing about being an arsonist (freely willed or otherwise, in a world where free will exists or where it doesn't) that objectively leads to those sorts of "justice" schemes.  Honestly, I don't think that they're justice at all, objective, subjective, whatever.  

Bringing me right back around to Sopalsky and Istvans criticism.  I don't think that conceiving of people as essentially bioautomata prevents us from doing a great deal of the effective work our justice system does.  If you take the suggestion seriously you might conclude that if we're being told that a person is in some sense not responsible for the arson they committed (some sense outside of..you know, having themselves committed it) - that all we are is a bundle of compulsions and exterior circumstances and preexisting routines.  That his poor circumstances made him this way - that his shitty life made him this way - that his abhorrent culture made him this way...that's an even better argument for locking a person up than "they just freely chose arson one day" would be.  He's fire starting bioautomata - might wanna put him in a fire retardant cell.  He didn't make a mistake, it wasn't because he was ignorant.  Arson is, apparently, what that person is.  Maybe, if people can be made a certain way, they can also be unmade that way.  A justification for rehabilitation.

I wish to elaborate on the very last thing you said in a way, mainly about a person's life making them the way they are...

First off, I have to agree with what you said, and secondly, if a person's life is shaped by external factors and the environment, wouldn't that make it harder for a person to choose who they want to be? I mean, if people's lives are shaped by things around them, I do not think they can choose freely without getting shaped. In fact, people's lives are shaped by a number of factors, from friends to family to...pretty much anything else. As I said before, people can develop devotions and allegiances to people and even fictional supreme beings to the point that they appear to have no freedom of their own; they just follow what others go with or want them to do. Combined with the shaping of people's lives part, I think that all takes away free will to a significant degree.

Plus, someone said the mind is more deterministic. Now, being free does mean you don't really need others or anything else to do something for you, nor are you dependent on them to do something yourself. As I may have also said before, the mind is something we don't really understand to this day, and with people's lives being shaped by the environment, we seem to be dependent on a lot of things, and behaviors, emotions, overall thinking and the like are shaped by the environment as well.

What I am trying to say, or ask, is...

Are we truly free, or have free will, when we seem to be dependent on outside factors and the overall environment and when our lives are shaped by those things as well as our minds? Are we truly independent at all, when we may let others shape our lives and even (in terms of some people, like religious people) don't think for ourselves and just follow others like a supposed supreme being?

[The Grand Nudger]

Are we truly free, or have free will, when we seem to be dependent on outside factors and the overall environment and when our lives are shaped by those things as well as our minds? Are we truly independent at all, when we may let others shape our lives and even (in terms of some people, like religious people) don't think for ourselves and just follow others like a supposed supreme being?

I don't think we are truly free or have free will.  Traditionally, for us westerners, free will was just an excuse for why our god seemed like such a cunt.  We freely willed all the nasty business - we deserve it, we had it coming.  Same bullshit crept into our legal systems.  Freely chose the homo sex, lets kill em.  Freely chose the wrong religion, lets kill em.  Freely chose to be black, lets kill em.  Freely chose to mock us for our idiocy - you know the drill. We wash our hands of the blood of the other this way.

The idea that humans are somehow outside of the causal chain, or that each of our decisions is the beginning of an entirely new causal chain is ludicrous on it's face.  It's never not been a silly idea, but it's almost always been a useful one. Even today, people who assert or acknowledge that we are not free in any of the ways free will demands still think we have one, a compatibilist free will, and that it's meaningful or useful to something. I think it's just us clinging tightly to an idea that we've been so thoroughly indoctrinated to we're uncomfortable disabusing ourselves of it. We've internalized all the batshit doom and gloom about how the world would be without a thing that doesn't exist. How we are without a thing that doesn't exist. Same exact meltdown the abrahamists have/had over it.

What I find interesting about that...is that free will wasn't even a thing until abrahamism was a state religion. We were fated. Our fates are the thing (or one of the things) that god(s) knew. Theological determinism. The nuts only got in an uproar about determinism when we figured out that their god wasn't The Determinator.