traditionally, determinism is not compatible with moral responsibility since all actions are predetermined and it is not obvious that one can be held morally responsible for them.
this is nonsense. You’re still making choices, just because you would’ve made those choices no matter what doesn’t mean your choices aren’t punishable or your fault. It’s not that you didn’t have a choice, it’s that you would’ve made that decision no matter what based on the laws of physics. These are not incompatible ideas, and I don’t get why people struggle with this. It’s very straightforward.
to the problem of the theist test, standard christian doctrine is that your fate in heaven is predetermined and individuals have been pre-chosen by god (theological term is ‘the elect’). in that sense, your worldly life is not a ‘test’, but the idea is that the holy spirit reveals god to those who have been selected.
this is also nonsense, the point was that it was a test, god should already know who’s going to be selected, if there’s no free will, this is still all pointless. Why does god need the holy spirit to do all that nonsense if it isn’t a test? If it’s predetermined, why did god make all these evil people that were just going to be miserable in hell anyway?
It’s not that you didn’t have a choice, it’s that you would’ve made that decision no matter what based on the laws of physics
in your view, what is the difference between having a forced decision and not having a choice? and why exactly would this forced choice be punishable in the same way a free one would be?
the point was that it was a test, god should already know who’s going to be selected, if there’s no free will, this is still all pointless.
a calvinist would not agree that the point is a test. read up on the ‘doctrine of unconditional election’ if you are curious. in brief, god makes decisions about who is saved and who isn’t not based on conditions they follow in their life, but based on his own purposes and goals.
If it’s predetermined, why did god make all these evil people that were just going to be miserable in hell anyway?
this is the problem of evil, there are numerous responses and the literature is extensive. again, a calvinist would probably say that he created evil people for his glory and grace. notably, jesus dying on the cross for humanity’s sins as a display of god’s grace does not make sense without the existence of evil.
in your view, what is the difference between having a forced decision and not having a choice? and why exactly would this forced choice be punishable in the same way a free one would be?
In determinism, you still have free choices, it’s just you would’ve made that choice if time was reversed and played again, nothing changed so why would the result be different? You compared all the options, and decided to make that choice, and if we reversed time, and played it back, you’d still make that decision… but it’s not like the universe compelled you to make that decision, nobody FORCED you to make that choice, you still made a decision all on your own, even if we reversed time and you would’ve made the same one, that changes precisely nothing of importance.
in brief, god makes decisions about who is saved and who isn’t not based on conditions they follow in their life, but based on his own purposes and goals.
then he’s just a dickbag putting us all in a world to suffer for fun, when he could just make us all in heaven.
again, a calvinist would probably say that he created evil people for his glory and grace. notably, jesus dying on the cross for humanity’s sins as a display of god’s grace does not make sense without the existence of evil.
yeah it doesn’t make any sense. that doesn’t actually make it make sense, that’s just a vague set of words. So god is a dickbag that needs worship why? Quite frankly like, any decent human being is better than this god, he’s just evil.
Quite frankly like, any decent human being is better than this god, he’s just evil.
incidentally, i agree with all this. but what a theist would probably say in response is that if god exists, he defines what evil is. what you perceive as evil is just your perception and can be wrong.
its not a bad argument, but i believe contrarily we have deep moral intuitions and can generally rationalize them in a kantian way, i believe we can make moral judgements independently of god.
there is a bit of a shifting of goalposts here with respect to how you define making a ‘choice’ with regard to logical and physical possibility/impossibility.
suppose i place a marble on a slope and let go. the marble rolls down due to gravity. did the marble ‘choose’ to roll down? it does not seem so.
is it possible for the opposite to occur, that is, the marble to roll up?
logically? yes, there is nothing logically contradictory about the marble rolling up after i drop it
physically? no, due to the laws of gravity
the logical possibility that the marble can roll upwards does not mean that it is a free will choice. replace the marble with an agent ‘choosing’ between options A and B, supposing the agent ‘chooses’ B. because you claim to be determinist, i take it you believe physics completely dictates the universe’s events, thus it is physical necessity that the agent ‘chooses’ B. however, it is logically possible for the agent to ‘choose’ A as choosing A does not entail anything logically contradictory.
what is the difference in the case of the agent vs. the marble? or do you actually believe the marble ‘chooses’ to roll down?
what is the difference in the case of the agent vs. the marble?
The agent made its decision based on knowledge, reasoning, experience, the risks, the morals. A marble doesn’t have knowledge, humans do, even if we’re deterministic, we can make decisions, it’s just that the decision will be made no matter what. That doesn’t free us from the responsibility of our decisions.
Just because the agent would’ve never made a different choice, doesn’t mean these things don’t matter anymore, it’s wholly irrelevant to whether or not we should punish them.
Just because the agent would’ve never made a different choice, doesn’t mean these things don’t matter anymore, it’s wholly irrelevant to whether or not we should punish them.
i do not make claims about punishments for actions, but instead i am talking about moral responsibility. consider a cat knocking over my cup, compared to a child who does it on purpose. your inclination is to hold the child morally responsible but not the cat. though you may punish the cat, you would not think that the cat is capable of the type of moral reasoning a child is capable of.
it may help to consider the example of a tree falling accidentally by gravity and killing a person. is that tree morally responsible for murder?
if you haven’t noticed by now, im an incompatibilist (i do not believe determinism is compatible with free will)
we fundamentally disagree on what a ‘decision’ is. you believe that logical possibility is enough for free will, i don’t.
The agent made its decision based on knowledge, reasoning, experience, the risks, the morals
i argue that if you accept determinism, this is an illusion. you believe you are making a decision based on free will because it is logically possible that you can take any of the available options, but it in actuality it is no different than the marble, you are physically bound to a specific outcome.
Do you think knowledge, reasoning, experience, and risks do not play any role in our decisions?
Sure, it is inevitable that we will make the decision we make, but it’s not that the marble will fall down every time that makes our choices significant, it’s the fact that we don’t arbitrarily make decisions.
If, because you know about determinism, you stop bothering to learn about the world, there will be a different outcome, even if that was inevitable, that’s how you influence the world. Free will doesn’t mean anything and isn’t important.
Even if there was free will, those things would be vastly more important than it. Free will is totally unimportant.
Do you think knowledge, reasoning, experience, and risks do not play any role in our decisions?
if you accept physical determinism, then knowledge, reasoning, experience, etc. are part of the physical system (ie. your brain) which makes the decision. they only play a role in that they influence the physical system for the decision making. the problem remains that you are forced to make a certain decision according to physics. the knowledge, reasoning, etc. are significant insofar as they influence the physics.
in determinism: you change the physics, you change the outcome. knowledge and reasoning changes the physics (the state of your mind), which changes the outcome. their influence on your decision making process does not imply free will.
Even if there was free will, those things would be vastly more important than it. Free will is totally unimportant
i gave an example of a tree accidentally falling and killing someone in the other comment, it is hard to imagine free will has nothing to do with why you don’t hold the tree morally responsible.
anyway, i am going to stop replying, my original reply was just showing that the free will problem is very much an issue for any deterministic position. there are potentially good ways to salvage determinism and i give references to three in my first comment, but the point you put forth is not convincing.
their influence on your decision making process does not imply free will
This means that nothing about free will is important in any decision making process, and thus free will is just a garbage concept that has no bearing or meaning in reality.
Even if there was such a thing as free will, it would be completely unimportant in decision making.
it is hard to imagine free will has nothing to do with why you don’t hold the tree morally responsible.
It doesn’t, let’s imagine free will separate from knowledge, reasoning, experience, etc. No amount of knowledge, reasoning, experience would prevent the tree from falling according to the laws of physics, that’s why I don’t hold the tree accountable. The tree has no knowledge, no reasoning, no experience, no morals, so, even if it could freely make the choice not to do it, because it doesn’t have those things, it doesn’t matter at all.
this is nonsense. You’re still making choices, just because you would’ve made those choices no matter what doesn’t mean your choices aren’t punishable or your fault. It’s not that you didn’t have a choice, it’s that you would’ve made that decision no matter what based on the laws of physics. These are not incompatible ideas, and I don’t get why people struggle with this. It’s very straightforward.
this is also nonsense, the point was that it was a test, god should already know who’s going to be selected, if there’s no free will, this is still all pointless. Why does god need the holy spirit to do all that nonsense if it isn’t a test? If it’s predetermined, why did god make all these evil people that were just going to be miserable in hell anyway?
in your view, what is the difference between having a forced decision and not having a choice? and why exactly would this forced choice be punishable in the same way a free one would be?
a calvinist would not agree that the point is a test. read up on the ‘doctrine of unconditional election’ if you are curious. in brief, god makes decisions about who is saved and who isn’t not based on conditions they follow in their life, but based on his own purposes and goals.
this is the problem of evil, there are numerous responses and the literature is extensive. again, a calvinist would probably say that he created evil people for his glory and grace. notably, jesus dying on the cross for humanity’s sins as a display of god’s grace does not make sense without the existence of evil.
In determinism, you still have free choices, it’s just you would’ve made that choice if time was reversed and played again, nothing changed so why would the result be different? You compared all the options, and decided to make that choice, and if we reversed time, and played it back, you’d still make that decision… but it’s not like the universe compelled you to make that decision, nobody FORCED you to make that choice, you still made a decision all on your own, even if we reversed time and you would’ve made the same one, that changes precisely nothing of importance.
then he’s just a dickbag putting us all in a world to suffer for fun, when he could just make us all in heaven.
yeah it doesn’t make any sense. that doesn’t actually make it make sense, that’s just a vague set of words. So god is a dickbag that needs worship why? Quite frankly like, any decent human being is better than this god, he’s just evil.
incidentally, i agree with all this. but what a theist would probably say in response is that if god exists, he defines what evil is. what you perceive as evil is just your perception and can be wrong.
its not a bad argument, but i believe contrarily we have deep moral intuitions and can generally rationalize them in a kantian way, i believe we can make moral judgements independently of god.
There’s no way to make babies having cancer moral. There’s no version of that god that is any good. If this isn’t a test, why give babies cancer?
there is a bit of a shifting of goalposts here with respect to how you define making a ‘choice’ with regard to logical and physical possibility/impossibility.
suppose i place a marble on a slope and let go. the marble rolls down due to gravity. did the marble ‘choose’ to roll down? it does not seem so.
is it possible for the opposite to occur, that is, the marble to roll up?
the logical possibility that the marble can roll upwards does not mean that it is a free will choice. replace the marble with an agent ‘choosing’ between options A and B, supposing the agent ‘chooses’ B. because you claim to be determinist, i take it you believe physics completely dictates the universe’s events, thus it is physical necessity that the agent ‘chooses’ B. however, it is logically possible for the agent to ‘choose’ A as choosing A does not entail anything logically contradictory.
what is the difference in the case of the agent vs. the marble? or do you actually believe the marble ‘chooses’ to roll down?
The agent made its decision based on knowledge, reasoning, experience, the risks, the morals. A marble doesn’t have knowledge, humans do, even if we’re deterministic, we can make decisions, it’s just that the decision will be made no matter what. That doesn’t free us from the responsibility of our decisions.
Just because the agent would’ve never made a different choice, doesn’t mean these things don’t matter anymore, it’s wholly irrelevant to whether or not we should punish them.
i do not make claims about punishments for actions, but instead i am talking about moral responsibility. consider a cat knocking over my cup, compared to a child who does it on purpose. your inclination is to hold the child morally responsible but not the cat. though you may punish the cat, you would not think that the cat is capable of the type of moral reasoning a child is capable of.
it may help to consider the example of a tree falling accidentally by gravity and killing a person. is that tree morally responsible for murder?
if you haven’t noticed by now, im an incompatibilist (i do not believe determinism is compatible with free will)
we fundamentally disagree on what a ‘decision’ is. you believe that logical possibility is enough for free will, i don’t.
i argue that if you accept determinism, this is an illusion. you believe you are making a decision based on free will because it is logically possible that you can take any of the available options, but it in actuality it is no different than the marble, you are physically bound to a specific outcome.
Do you think knowledge, reasoning, experience, and risks do not play any role in our decisions?
Sure, it is inevitable that we will make the decision we make, but it’s not that the marble will fall down every time that makes our choices significant, it’s the fact that we don’t arbitrarily make decisions.
If, because you know about determinism, you stop bothering to learn about the world, there will be a different outcome, even if that was inevitable, that’s how you influence the world. Free will doesn’t mean anything and isn’t important.
Even if there was free will, those things would be vastly more important than it. Free will is totally unimportant.
if you accept physical determinism, then knowledge, reasoning, experience, etc. are part of the physical system (ie. your brain) which makes the decision. they only play a role in that they influence the physical system for the decision making. the problem remains that you are forced to make a certain decision according to physics. the knowledge, reasoning, etc. are significant insofar as they influence the physics.
in determinism: you change the physics, you change the outcome. knowledge and reasoning changes the physics (the state of your mind), which changes the outcome. their influence on your decision making process does not imply free will.
i gave an example of a tree accidentally falling and killing someone in the other comment, it is hard to imagine free will has nothing to do with why you don’t hold the tree morally responsible.
anyway, i am going to stop replying, my original reply was just showing that the free will problem is very much an issue for any deterministic position. there are potentially good ways to salvage determinism and i give references to three in my first comment, but the point you put forth is not convincing.
This means that nothing about free will is important in any decision making process, and thus free will is just a garbage concept that has no bearing or meaning in reality.
Even if there was such a thing as free will, it would be completely unimportant in decision making.
It doesn’t, let’s imagine free will separate from knowledge, reasoning, experience, etc. No amount of knowledge, reasoning, experience would prevent the tree from falling according to the laws of physics, that’s why I don’t hold the tree accountable. The tree has no knowledge, no reasoning, no experience, no morals, so, even if it could freely make the choice not to do it, because it doesn’t have those things, it doesn’t matter at all.