Does moral responsibility entail libertarian free will?

[Ernies]

Yes, we all are.

Deterministically free

(which to me means "the ability to choose, unconstrained by external forces")

Best Regards

'Deterministically free' is the best example of oxymoron I have heard in years . ROFL. Your later explanation seems to me totally incompatible with the earlier words.

May you remain happy in your freely chosen illusion.

Ernies

p.s. look up the derivation of oxymoron.

 

[moving finger]

'Deterministically free' is the best example of oxymoron I have heard in years

Dear Ernies

If you care to spend some time learning about the word "free" and its various meanings, instead of simply focussing on trying to be naively "clever", you would understand that there is nothing necessarily contradictory in the notions of determinism and freedom.

A deterministic machine is free (unconstrained by external forces) to make choices, but this does not imply that it possesses anything akin to the libertarian notion of free will.

We talk of objects being in "free fall" when unconstrained in a gravitational field, but we don't mean by this that they are not acting deterministically.

We talk in mechanics of "degrees of freedom" of physical systems, but we don't mean by this that they are not acting deterministically.

You perhaps assume one and only one meaning for the word "free", but in that case you live in a very blinkered world

Best Regards

 

[Ernies]

1.The primary meaning of 'free', in several dictionaries at least, is
"able to act at will; not under compulsion or restraint". It does not restrict it to 'external' constraint or deterministic external function.
2. All other uses are either a subset of this or mere analogies, which would of course include your 'external constraint', and things like 'free fall'.
3. Yet you insist that that 'free will', which is surely not external --to me, at least--- is 'illusion' which conceals determinism.

You are mistaken in thinking that I was not aware of the alternatives. Having spent several years being made mince-meat of by Herbert McCabe, this was impossible. I was concerned at the swapping between 'external' and 'internal' without notice.
(In case you don't know the name, McCabe was a Dominican who was also a genius. I was and am an agnostic, which of course meant fairly vigorous arguments every week. Being then young and inexperienced he usually made salami of me, but I did learn to detect those 'theories' which involved an un-announced change of connotation in reaching conclusions).
If you think I was merely trying to be 'clever', I am sorry to have given that impression. The remark about the derivation was meant as a joke. Perhaps I should have put the 'biggrin' symbol after it as you did.

Ernies.

 

[Q_Goest]

Hi MF, Regarding the tea/coffee choice experiment, I don't see any reason to apply moral responsibility to that choice. I might suggest this experiment instead:

Let's create a fictitious world where an almighty deity (let's call him Ogaud) decided he's very lonely as he alone exists. Nothing else exists. There is no white light nor even darkness because nothing else exists to create subjective experiences. Ogaud doesn't know what a noise sounds like nor what salsa tastes like because nothing exists.

So Ogaud decides to create something called a compter. This compter uses miss and mass to create things. When miss and mass bump into each other they do so in a very determinate way, just like billiard balls reflecting off each other on a pool table. An explanation of how it works could be derived perhaps, but it's very complex.

After playing with his compter a few times, Ogaud becomes enamored by the game. He decides to call it "Determinizm" and plays it every day. His day however equals 20 billion years to us. Still, he doesn't notice how quickly the time flies by when he plays this wonderful game.

Eventually though he gets bored with it. It seems, each time he plays with his compter something funny, albeit totally expected, happens. Each morning that he sets it into motion, the same events seem to unfold. He watches a tremendous explosion of things occur, and then takes note of a relatively tiny lump of miss/mass orbiting a large, hot lump. And on this tiny lump things start to appear, including a character named Movinger who questions the game of Determinizm and even morality itself. Each time Determinizm is played, Movinger arrives at the same conclusions. Each time the compter runs, it ends up creating all the same characters on this tiny lump of miss/mass which just happen to be the only characters in the entire game. And when the game ends after 20 billion of our years, each of the characters is perfectly reproduced each and every time. Each lump of miss/mass moves exactly the same way each time.

Ogaud doesn't like deja vu.

In fact, Ogaud hates it. Ogaud becomes so frustrated with the compter that eventually he sets down a rule that says "If any character makes all the same motions as he did in previous games, I shall reconstruct you with all your memories and place your miss/mass into a buring sea, and I shall call this new game niss/nass."

You see, the niss/nass is the nasty part of a new compter game that Ogaud has, one which can maintain all subjective phenomena of any emergent piece of miss/mass in the first game. The tiny bits of miss/mass will then undergo the subjective experience of excruciating agony for the remainder of the game.

Ogaud believes this will change the game of Determinizm somehow. Ogaud likes this rule and he calls it "moral responsibility".

Another morning arises and of course, Ogaud is eager to try out his new niss/nass compter game along with the miss/mass one. Much to his annoyance though, Determinizm continues down the same course it took each time he's played it. Each and every character does exactly the same thing they did last time, and Movinger continues to question morality.

When Movinger dies, he is thus recreated with all his memories and experiences and is cast into the lake of fire and experiences a burning sensation. At this point he begins to scream for mother and remains in excruciating pain for the rest of Ogaud's day.

~

Personally, I don't think Ogaud should sentence Movinger to the sea of misery just because Movinger couldn't change the outcome of Ogaud's game. I see no reason Movinger should be punished because he couldn't change Ogaud's game. Movinger had no choice. Movinger was aware of the consequences, but he truly could do nothing to change his actions. Nor could any of the characters in the miss/mass. Yet Ogaud decided there should be something called moral responsibility and he even knew ahead of time that each character would continue to do exactly what they did before. The terrible niss/nass game was in no way connected to the miss/mass game, and the game always played out exactly as they had before. There could be no difference in the outcome of the game. Ogaud simply wanted to send Movinger to the sea of torment so he could watch the little character scream helplessly for what seemed an eternity to the wretched blighter.

Similarly, I see no purpose in suggesting the concept of moral responsibility exists in a world where the concept of determinism also exists. Moral responsibility implies something else.

What else do you think is needed before an agent can be deemed responsible for its actions?

I don't know, but it seems to me a deterministic set of world rules will also rule out what we understand as moral responsibility. Yes, it can be redefined, rephrased or re something. But the meaning of moral responsibility is lost IMHO when you place determinisitic constraints on all of the agents.